AlterNet.org: Travis Waldronhttp://www.alternet.org/authors/travis-waldron
enFormer Students' Backs to the Wall on Loan Increase: Will Congress Do the Right Thing? http://www.alternet.org/education/obama-pressures-congress-avoid-doubling-student-loan-interest-rates
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The president will launch a campaign aimed at preventing interest rates on federal student loans from doubling at the start of July.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>President Obama will today launch a campaign aimed at preventing interest rates on federal student loans from <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/04/09/1840591/interest-rates-on-student-loans-set-to-double-even-as-students-fall-deeper-into-debt/">doubling at the start of July</a>, gathering college students at the White House in an effort to challenge Congress to prevent the rate increase. The White House has already re-upped its “don’t double my rate” campaign, which helped force Congress’ hand in passing a temporary fix in 2012, on social media.</p><p>The current rate on federal loans is 3.4 percent; that would double on July 1 without action from Congress. House Republicans approved a plan to halt the increase last week that would tie student loan rates to interest rates on 10-year Treasury bonds, which are currently at 2.5 percent and expected to rise above 5 percent over the next five years as the economy improves. Obama’s plan is similar in that it would also tie rates to Treasury notes.</p><p>But the White House has threatened to veto the House plan over a major difference between the two plans. Obama’s proposal would apply fixed rates to student loans, so that a borrower was guaranteed the interest rate he or she agreed to when the loan was originated. The House plan, however, would cap rates at 8.5 percent but would not fix them, meaning borrowers would be subject to varying rates over the life of the loan.</p><p>Under the House plan, a student who took out the maximum amount of federal loans would <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/22/us-usa-studentloans-veto-idUSBRE94L1BF20130522">pay $14,430 in interest</a>, nearly $2,000 more than they would pay if rates doubled as scheduled and twice what they would pay under current rates. “The bill’s changes would impose the largest interest rate increases on low- and middle-income students and families who struggle most to afford a college education,” the White House said in issuing the veto threat last week.</p><p>Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have introduced other proposals for dealing with interest rates on student loans. Gillibrand’s legislation would force the Dept. of Education to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/05/20/2034731/gillibrand-student-debt-refinance/">refinance any student loan</a> with an interest rate above 4 percent to a fixed 4 percent loan, a plan the Center for American Progress estimates would save borrowers <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/kirsten-gillibrand-student-loans_n_3303754.html">$14.5 billion</a> in the first year alone. Warren’s plan would tie student loan rates to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/05/09/1986511/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-student-debt/">those received by large banks</a>, which access federal loans at miniscule interest rates. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also exploring ways to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/02/21/1622641/cfpb-announces-new-push-to-alleviate-mounting-student-loan-debt/">reduce the burden of student debt</a> on borrowers.</p><p>Americans now hold more than $1 trillion in student loan debt, and they defaulted on those loans<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2013/03/28/1791261/first-three-months-of-2013-were-worst-on-record-for-student-loan-defaults/">in record numbers</a> during the first three months of 2013. The amount of debt is holding back the economy, as young borrowers are struggling to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/05/796421/report-student-debt-housing-recovery/">afford mortgages</a> and other loans as they pay for the cost of education.</p> Fri, 31 May 2013 16:56:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress848680 at http://www.alternet.orgEducationEducationobamastudent loan interest ratevetoelizabeth warren5 Ways Our Tax Code Benefits the Rich and Screws Everyone Elsehttp://www.alternet.org/5-ways-our-tax-code-benefits-rich-and-screws-everyone-else
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Happy tax day!</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>Today is Tax Day, the day on which federal and state taxes are due for all Americans. Republicans have, of course, spent the year since Tax Day 2012 arguing that tax rates are too high and pushing for tax cuts for the wealthy at both the federal and state level. In reality, however, America’s tax code provides substantial benefits to the rich that working class Americans don’t get to enjoy.</p><p>State tax codes are heavily slanted toward the rich, as we’ve highlighted before. At the federal level, huge tax expenditures also make the tax code friendlier to the wealthiest Americans. The United States spends <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/17/465682/on-tax-day-a-reminder-that-americas-tax-code-subsidizes-the-top-1-percent/">more than $1.3 trillion a year</a> on tax expenditures, and while some of them help the middle class, many of them are aimed specifically at the wealthy, who receive an <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/tax-system-is-america-s-biggest-spender.html">extra $250,000 a year</a> in income thanks to tax breaks. Here are five ways the tax code benefits the wealthy:</p><blockquote><p>1. Deductions: The majority of tax breaks come through deductions, and while several deductions have substantial benefits for working class Americans, the advantages for the wealthy are much larger. Because of the way they are structured, popular deductions like those for mortgage interest, retirement savings, and charitable giving provide far <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">bigger benefits for the wealthy</a> than they do for average Americans, creating an “upside-down” effect that gives the biggest tax breaks to those who need them least and making the tax code look “more progressive than it actually is.” President Obama has proposed capping individual deductions at 28 percent, meaning the wealthy would get the same benefit as taxpayers in the middle class tax bracket. Other proposals, such as <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CAPTaxPlanReportFINAL-b.pdf">converting all deductions to tax credits</a>, would make the tax code even more fair for middle- and lower-class families.</p><p>2. Capital gains: The capital gains preference taxes income from investments at a lower rate than ordinary wage income, providing a huge tax break to investors. Republicans argue that the low capital gains rate boosts the economy, but there is <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/29/1252751/no-low-capital-gains-taxes-dont-boost-the-economy/">little evidence</a> that higher capital gains rates hurt the economy. Instead, the preference increases income inequality, since capital gains income is earned almost solely by the wealthy. Cuts to the capital gains rate since Ronald Reagan equalized it with tax rates on normal income, in fact, are “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/20/1616651/capital-gains-tax-cuts-by-far-the-biggest-contributor-to-growth-in-income-inequality-study-finds/">by far the largest contributor</a>” to increased income inequality over the last three decades, according to recent studies.</p><p>3. Carried interest: The carried interest loophole, which President Obama <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/12/1859951/why-obamas-budget-eliminates-the-carried-interest-tax-loophole/">closes</a> in his recent budget proposal, benefits wealthy hedge fund managers who take their pay from investors’ profits instead of through management fees, which makes the income subject to the lower capital gains rate than ordinary income rates. The loophole applies to virtually no one, but it allows those who use it — wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives like Mitt Romney — to substantially lower their tax rates. Eliminating it would both make the tax code more equitable and save <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">as much as $21 billion</a> over 10 years.</p><p>4. Estate tax: The estate tax rose at the beginning of 2013, but the tax deal that helped avert the “fiscal cliff” also locked in huge exemptions for the wealthy. The estate tax now allows individuals to exempt up to $5.25 million from taxation, meaning heirs to a couple’s estate can inherit $10.5 million without paying taxes. The estate tax now applies to only the <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">wealthiest 0.14 percent</a> of Americans, and from the income that is passed down each year (almost entirely from wealthy families), it raises less than 1 percent of revenue.</p><p>5. Deductions for vacation homes: The mortgage interest tax deduction, aimed at promoting home ownership, allows homeowners to deduct interest paid on their second home as well. That obviously benefits the wealthy, since they are more likely to have second homes, but it gets worse: the deduction <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">can also apply to large yachts</a> that have sleeping spaces, giving a tax break to wealthy boat owners. This loophole alone costs the U.S. an estimated $10 billion each decade.</p></blockquote> Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:42:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress824900 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & PoliticswealthyrichTax Dodging by the Rich Cost You $1,026 http://www.alternet.org/tax-dodging-rich-cost-you-1026
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Corporations and the wealthy cost each taxpayer $1,026 In 2012.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>America’s largest corporations have stashed nearly <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/11/1699101/corporate-profits-tax-havens/">$1.5 trillion</a> in offshore tax havens like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Ireland — countries where they do little business but claim massive profits due to low tax rates. As a result, corporate tax rates fell to a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/03/418171/corporate-taxes-40-year-low/">40-year low</a>in 2011 even as profits rose to a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/17/345603/corporate-profits-50-years-main-street-struggles/">60-year high</a>.</p><p>Tax avoidance from corporations and wealthy individuals has a cost for individual taxpayers and small businesses, according to a <a href="http://uspirg.org/reports/usp/picking-tab-2013">new report</a>from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. According to U.S. PIRG, tax dodging cost individual taxpayers $1,026 and each small business $3,067 in 2012.</p><p>Those costs don’t necessarily come from higher taxes; instead, they often come in the form of higher budget deficits or, as they are now, from substantial cuts to public programs and services that benefit middle- and low-income families. “This is a real loss and it’s putting great pressure on the budget and all kinds of investments and programs that the federal government needs to continue to fund,” Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (D) said on a conference call unveiling the report today. Levin has authored legislation calling for the <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">closure of tax loopholes</a> that incentivize the offshoring of profits. “It’s time to close the loopholes, reduce the deficit to protect these important investments in our future, and to bring some fairness back to the tax code,” Levin said.</p><p>As corporate tax reform becomes a hot topic in Washington, however, corporations are <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/19/1745301/ceos-to-begin-lobbying-campaign-for-corporate-tax-cuts-reforms-to-make-it-easier-to-offshore-profits/">pushing for reforms</a> that would <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/27/1781921/corporate-tax-rates-lobbying/">make it even easier</a> to offshore profits. A “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/19/1745301/ceos-to-begin-lobbying-campaign-for-corporate-tax-cuts-reforms-to-make-it-easier-to-offshore-profits/">territorial</a>” system, desired by corporations and corporate lobbying groups, would exempt most foreign profits from American taxation and allow corporations to return profits to the U.S. without taxing them. But Dan Smith, the tax and budget director at U.S. PIRG and co-author of the report, said such a system would only make corporate tax dodging worse.</p><p>“A territorial system is essentially the worst of all worlds and would amount to tax dodging made easy. So if the loopholes we have in our current tax code allow companies to shift money offshore, a territorial tax system would be an open invitation to continue to do that,” Smith said on the call. “It would blow a hole in the federal budget and continue to give multinational corporations a huge advantage over small businesses here in America and also larger domestic businesses that don’t use these loopholes.”</p><p>Other studies have shown that a territorial system, a reform supported by the House GOP’s top tax-writer, would lead to the creation of <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/report/2012/07/16/11935/romneys-new-tax-incentive-for-outsourcing-u-s-jobs/">800,000 overseas jobs</a>. In addition, it would only raise the costs of corporate tax avoidance for both individuals and small businesses.</p> Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:12:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress820269 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & PoliticscorporationstaxesCorporations Pay Lower Tax Rates Than Ever While Lobbying For Even Bigger Tax Breakshttp://www.alternet.org/labor/corporations-pay-lower-tax-rates-ever-while-lobbying-even-bigger-tax-breaks
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In 2012, 83 corporations moved $166 billion overseas, bringing their total to $1.46 trillion -- most of it kept in tax havens like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Ireland. </div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>As large American companies continue to lobby Congress for tax reform that would lower their tax rates, a study of historical corporate tax rates found that they are in fact paying at rates roughly half of those they paid decades ago.</p><p>The <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/post-analysis-of-dow-30-firms-shows-declining-tax-burden-as-a-share-of-profits/2013/03/26/3dfe5132-7b9a-11e2-82e8-61a46c2cde3d_story.html">analyzed 30 large companies</a> listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average — companies like McDonalds, Microsoft, and Exxon Mobil — and found that their tax rates have fallen even as profits have risen, thanks in large part to tax laws that provide incentives to store overseas profits in offshore tax havens. Many of the companies, the Post found, are paying rates less than half what they paid in the 1960s and 1970s, and most of the 30 have vastly reduced their rates in that time:</p><blockquote><p>A <em>Washington Post</em> analysis of data from S&amp;P Capital IQ, a research firm, found that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, companies listed on the current Dow 30 routinely cited U.S. federal tax expenses that were 25 to 50 percent of their worldwide profits. Now, most are reporting less than half that share. [...]</p><p>Out of all the firms in the Dow 30, 22 have seen a drop of more than 10 percentage points between the oldest year for which data are available and the most recent year.</p></blockquote><p>American tax law allows companies to shield foreign profits from taxation until they are brought back to the United States, and corporations have happily obliged. The largest 83 corporations moved <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/11/1699101/corporate-profits-tax-havens/">$166 billion</a> overseas in 2012 alone, bringing their total to $1.46 trillion, and most of it, according to a Congressional Research Service study, was <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42927.pdf">kept in tax havens</a> like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Ireland. As a result, they have seen huge reductions in tax rates: McDonald’s, for example, saw its tax rate plunge from 37 percent in 1973 to 14 percent in 2012.</p><p>Corporate profits hit a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/17/345603/corporate-profits-50-years-main-street-struggles/">60-year high</a> in 2011, right as the effective corporate tax rate hit a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/03/418171/corporate-taxes-40-year-low/">40-year low</a>. America’s largest companies, in fact, haven’t paid the full corporate tax rate in 45 years, and 26 have <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460519/major-corporations-no-taxes-four-year/">avoided taxation altogether</a> for the past four years. At the same time, business leaders have lobbied Congress to reform the corporate tax code by adopting a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/19/1745301/ceos-to-begin-lobbying-campaign-for-corporate-tax-cuts-reforms-to-make-it-easier-to-offshore-profits/">territorial tax system</a> that would exempt most foreign profits from American taxation, making it even easier for the companies to shift profits, investments, and jobs overseas.</p><p>One analysis found that a territorial system would lead to the creation of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/16/520431/how-romney-would-make-it-easier-for-american-companies-to-avoid-taxes-outsource-jobs/">800,000 jobs</a> in other countries that otherwise could have been created in the United States. An alternative tax reform that closes corporate loopholes that lead to the offshoring of profits and jobs wouldn’t bring the tax rate back to historical levels, but it would still generate roughly <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/2013/01/22/50198/next-round-of-deficit-reduction-must-tackle-hidden-spending-in-the-tax-code/">$168 billion</a> in revenue over the next decade.</p><div> </div> Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:00 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress815847 at http://www.alternet.orgLaborLabortaxtax havenscorporate tax avoidance1 in 6 US Kids Has Unemployed or Underemployed Parenthttp://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/1-6-us-kids-has-unemployed-or-underemployed-parent
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">6.2 million children live in homes where at least one parent is unemployed; the total rises to 12.1 million when underemployment is included too.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>One of every six American children has a parent that is either unemployed or underemployed, according to a<a href="http://www.firstfocus.net/sites/default/files/Unemployment%20from%20a%20Childs%20Perspective.pdf">new study</a> from First Focus and the Urban Institute. Overall, 6.2 million children live in homes where at least one parent is unemployed; the total rises to 12.1 million when underemployment is included too. While that number has decreased slightly in the last two years, it is still substantially higher than pre-recession levels, the report found:</p><p><img alt="" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/childunemployment.jpg" title="childunemployment" /></p><p>The effects of parental unemployment on children are far-reaching: children with at least one unemployed parent are more likely to fall into poverty, especially if their parents are among the long-term unemployed. Unemployment is linked to lower math scores and poorer school attendance, and parental job loss increases the risk of a child being held back in school by 15 percent. Low-income students whose parents lose jobs are less likely to attend college, and one study found that boys whose fathers lost jobs earned 9 percent less over their lifetimes than boys whose fathers did not.</p><p>One problem that exacerbates the effects of parental unemployment is the weakness of America’s social safety net, which ranks among the stingiest in the industrialized world. More families with unemployed parents qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) than do unemployment insurance, even though SNAP is a less beneficial program. As the report states, “in July 2012, SNAP monthly benefits averaged about $278 per household, less than the average weekly benefit of $299 for unemployment benefits (the monthly equivalent of $1,286)”:</p><p><img alt="" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/childunemployment3.jpg" title="childunemployment3" /></p><p>That situation is only deteriorating further, as <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/11/1569621/states-cut-unemployment-insurance/">eight states</a> have <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/19/1610571/north-carolina-unemployment-cuts/">cut unemployment insurance</a> programs below the typical 26 weeks. That costs jobless workers access to federal benefits as well, since the federal program is partially dependent on state eligibility standards. The 1996 welfare reform law made TANF <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/01/1661151/welfare-reform-failed-recession/">less likely to help</a>children in need. And SNAP has been the subject of cuts since it was expanded in 2009, though those cuts have so far been avoided. All in all, America’s social safety net isn’t robust enough to help families — and especially children — who need it most.<br /><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/26/1774391/children-unemployment/#more-1774391">READ LESS</a></p><p><br />While the safety net is important, what would really help the children affected by parental unemployment are policies to help boost economic growth. Congress has instead focused on reining in deficits and cutting the debt. Not only has that misguided focus <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/12/1580111/three-charts-that-show-america-doesnt-have-a-spending-problem/">slowed down the recovery</a>, it has put the programs that help them when the economy can’t on the chopping block too.</p><div> </div> Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:00:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress815204 at http://www.alternet.orgHard Times USAHard Times USANews & PoliticsunemploymentEight Important Programs That Are Already Being Gutted After Two Years of Phony "Crises" in Washingtonhttp://www.alternet.org/economy/eight-important-programs-are-already-being-gutted-after-two-years-phony-crises-washington
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">It could get worse as the &quot;sequester&quot; fight approaches.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>Even without the spending cuts included in the so-called “sequester,” America’s domestic spending levels are scheduled to hit historic lows in the coming years. That’s because the Budget Control Act, signed into law as part of the plan to raise the debt ceiling in August 2011, capped future spending levels.</p><p>Those caps will ultimately reduce spending to its lowest level as a percent of the economy since the 1970s, according to <a href="http://democrats.appropriations.house.gov/images/DISCRETIONARY%20APPROPRIATIONS%20UNDER%20EXISTING%20LAW%20AT%20HISTORIC%20LOWS.pdf">a report</a> from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee:</p><p><img alt="" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/sequesterchart.jpg" style="height: 327px; width: 450px;" title="sequesterchart" /></p><p>Already, many programs on which Americans depend have faced significant cuts. Here are eight examples from the report:</p><blockquote><p>Education: 44 federal education programs have been totally eliminated, saving $1.1 billion, since 2010. Title I, which funds schools in low-income areas, has not faced cuts, but it has not received scheduled funding increases. As a result, it has absorbed 1.2 million more students with no additional funds, meaning districts now have $140 less per student in those schools. The capped spending levels will also result in a significant shortfall in the Pell Grants program.</p><p>Food safety: The Food and Drug Administration nearly doubled its inspection of food imports between 2007 and 2011, but such inspections would be reduced by 24 percent under scheduled spending caps. Food imports are skyrocketing, but the FDA inspects only 2.3 percent of them. In addition, budget cuts have jeopardized implementation of major food safety reforms.</p><p>Women, Infants, and Children programs: The WIC program helps low-income women who are pregnant or have infant children up to age five. “If the same rate of growth that the discretionary budget caps permit through 2022 had been used to determine WIC funding over the last eight years, some 970,000 women, infants, and children would not have been able to receive much-needed supplemental foods this year,” according to the report.</p><p>Housing: A program to help house low-income seniors was cut in half from 2010 to 2012, resulting in the construction of no new housing, even as there are 10 seniors on waiting lists for each existing unit. Another program to build low-income housing was cut from $1.8 billion in 2010 to just $1 billion in 2012, resulting in the construction of fewer homes and the creation of 8,000 fewer jobs. And a program that helps heat low-income homes in the winter was cut by a third, resulting in assistance for a million fewer homes last year and cuts for those who still receive assistance, even as energy prices have risen by 31 percent in that time.</p><p> </p><p>Social Security: A rising number of senior citizens and disability claims has put a strain on the Social Security Administration’s operating budget, which has not increased in two years. SSA has cut 6,500 workers and closed 23 offices, with plans to close 11 more. There were more than 800,000 claims made to SSA last year, an increase of 100,000 from the previous year.</p><p>Child Care: Federal funding for the Child Care Development Block Grant, which helps low-income families access subsidies for child care, has declined by 13 percent since 2002. Only one in six children who are eligible for that assistance now receive it.</p><p>Aviation Safety: The Federal Aviation Administraton has faced $205 million in cuts to programs meant to help update its infrastructure, even as the department is switching its monitoring system to a safer one based on satellites.</p><p>Community Investment: Community Development Block Grants help localities fund economic development, housing, and public services. The program has been cut by a quarter, a total of $1 billion, in the last two years. The Dept. of Housing and Urban Development estimates that the $1 billion reduction resulted in 21,000 fewer jobs being created last year.</p></blockquote><p>This is just a sampling of the cuts that have taken place, and again, they do not reflect the impact of the automatic cuts that will begin on March 1 if Congress does not avert them. The sequester would cut discretionary spending by 8.2 percent across-the-board, further jeopardizing these programs and others. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the sequester’s budget cuts would result <a href="http://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/2013/01/now-it%E2%80%99s-time-sequester-anxiety">the loss of one million jobs</a>.</p> Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:00:00 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress791890 at http://www.alternet.orgEconomyEconomyEducationElection 2014austerityIs the Outrageous Exploitation of College Athletes Finally Coming to an End?http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/outrageous-exploitation-college-athletes-finally-coming-end
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A growing chorus of doubters is beginning to see through the NCAA&#039;s insistence that its athletes are amateurs.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> <p>Confetti rained on the University of Alabama football team as they stood on the makeshift stage that had been quickly assembled atop the turf of Miami's Sun Life Stadium. The team had just completed its third national championship in four years by walloping Notre Dame in the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game, and now it was time to celebrate. The 80,000-plus crowd -- smaller now that the Notre Dame contingent had largely vacated, but still boisterous thanks to Alabama fans and those lucky enough to afford a ticket -- looked on admirably as the trophy was awarded to Nick Saban, the Tide's $5 million-a-year head coach.</p><p>To an outsider unfamiliar with American collegiate sports, or to anyone watching objectively, it would be impossible to differentiate between the scene on that balmy Miami night and the one that will commence in three weeks when the National Football League crowns its champion at Super Bowl XLVII. But there is one distinction that lies beneath the hoopla, and it is one that makes all the difference between the college spectacle and the professional one: Alabama's players, unlike their NFL counterparts, are not paid to play the game.<br /><br />The National Collegiate Athletic Association, college sports' governing body since 1906, does not look fondly on the idea of paying its players, even as its games have grown into a billion-dollar industry. The NCAA argues that its players are amateurs, that amateurism is the defining goal and attribute of college sports, that without amateurism, the entire system would collapse on top of itself.</p><p>There have been challenges to the NCAA’s amateurism mystique before, but it was author and civil rights historian Taylor Branch who framed it in a new way and drew new attention to the debate with<em></em><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/">"The Shame of College Sports</a>," a tour de force against the NCAA that graced the cover of the<em>Atlantic</em>. The piece laid waste to the idea that the players were “student-athletes” upholding the ideals of amateurism, and as such, had no right to compensation.<br /><br />Branch raised the specter that the biggest travesty in college athletics is not that the athletes are unpaid, but that they do not have a say in whether they should be paid or whether the scholarships they are provided are fair compensation for their work. He framed the issue of paying college athletes as one of fundamental rights and challenged the notion that the athletes – particularly football players – were anything less than employees operating in a big business, one that operates much like a cartel. “Rights are rights because they should come first,” Branch told me when I spoke to him about the issue last year. “Whether it’s $3,000 or $30,000 is something schools should work out, but players should have a voice.”<br /><br />There are many ways players could get that voice, and action has been taken both inside and outside college sports to make it happen. The possibility that the biggest conferences could leave the NCAA and compensate their players has arisen even among the ranks of recognizable coaches. Former players have begun challenging the NCAA in court, arguing that the organization is violating their rights. College professors and labor attorneys have studied the argument that players are indeed employees and have pushed ways that they could organize to better advocate for themselves, while outside groups have attempted to help players do just that. State legislators, meanwhile, have begun proposing legislation that would force the NCAA’s hand.<br /><br />Across the country, a debate that was once relegated to the barroom has moved into boardrooms and classrooms, statehouses and courthouses. What it all adds up to is an unprecedented push for the rights of college athletes coming from fronts both inside and outside the NCAA structure.<br /><br />A number of issues have precipitated that debate from the inside. In recent years, football's biggest conferences have begun poaching teams from each other in a race for the money that new members in new, bigger television markets could bring. Since the University of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College shunned the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2004, 10 other schools have left one of football's six major conferences for another. The motivation is money: bigger conferences with teams in more television markets mean more lucrative television packages from networks like ESPN, CBS and Fox Sports.<br /><br />That expansion, along with the BCS playoff that will begin in 2014, will generate millions of dollars in new revenue for universities, all because of football.<br /><br />The big business that is American college athletics continues to prosper, even if the labor on which it depends does not. But because players are defined as student-athletes and not as employees, they don’t share in the wealth. And the NCAA’s arguments continue to shift from amateurism to sustainability.<br /><br />That paying players is unsustainable, that there isn't enough money to make it work, is a laughable excuse to people like Jay Bilas, a college basketball analyst for ESPN who regularly sees the business up close. There would be plenty of money to pay players, he argues, if it was allocated differently. “They always go to amateuris; then, when that fails, they say there’s not enough money,” Bilas said of NCAA defenders. “They pay themselves first, then say there’s not enough left over for the athlete. That’s absurd.”<br /><br />At the biggest schools, that would seem to be the case. The University of Texas pays just four members of its athletics staff -- its athletic director, men's and women's basketball head coaches, and football head coach -- $9.8 million a year, according to salary reports from USA Today and Forbes. Ohio State University pays a collective $8.7 million to the same four positions. Twelve schools paid a <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fespn.go.com%2fblog%2fplaybook%2fdollars%2fpost%2f_%2fid%2f2520%2fschools-pay-out-31-million-to-fired-coaches">collective $31 million</a> in buyouts after firing their coaches this year. Ohio State embarked on a $19 million renovation of its basketball arena in 2012; at the same time, it made a $7 million upgrade to the video screens at its football stadium. Texas is planning a full-scale renovation of athletic facilities that will undoubtedly have a price tag in the tens of millions.<br /><br />Across the top-tier of college athletics, the stories are the same. In 2011, there were 31 men's basketball coaches who made at least $1 million, according to Forbes. There were five coaches in women's basketball, long considered a non-revenue sport, who topped that same threshold (in 2007, just one women's coach made more than $1 million). The $5.4 million Alabama paid Nick Saban to coach its football team in 2012 would make him one of the 10 highest-paid coaches in the NFL and would put him just outside the top 10 of highest paid coaches in American professional sports. The average head coaching salary in college football’s top division is now $1.64 million, a 44 percent increase since 2007, and that average is $2.3 million or higher in three of the six BCS conferences.<br /><br />The money will only continue to pour in. The Southeastern Conference has two television deals worth more than $3 billion combined, and after adding Texas A&amp;M and the University of Missouri last year, it is in the process of renegotiating them for even more money. The Big XII, Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12 have followed with similar, if slightly less lucrative, deals. The Big Ten now has its own 24-7 sports network; Texas started the Longhorn Network to broadcast its sporting events across the state. The BCS recently signed a 12-year agreement with ESPN that will reportedly pay it $5.6 billion, or roughly $470 million a year. That money will be divvied among schools too.<br /><br />At the same time, universities have begun exempting more and more costs from the value of a full scholarship, adding fees that aren't covered by the aid athletes receive and creating a gap between that amount and the amount they owe their schools.<br /><br />The response from the NCAA has been to add a yearly stipend to the value of the scholarship, though smaller schools have balked repeatedly and blocked final approval. Such a stipend, the organization argues in a bizarre display of logical gymnastics, amounts to an extension of financial aid and maintains the integrity of amateurism. It is not, NCAA president Mark Emmert asserts, a path toward paying players.<br /><br />The proposal is supported broadly, at least by college coaches at the biggest schools. All 14 of the Southeastern Conference's head football coaches have said players should have some stake in the financial success of their programs, which are collectively the most lucrative in college football. So has Texas head coach Mack Brown, who makes $5.3 million a year at the helm of one of college football's richest empires.<br /><br />The rise of the mega-conferences and frustration with a lack of progress in the stipend process, though, has driven speculation about other alternatives. And in recent years, one of the NCAA’s most well-recognized coaches, the leader of one of college sports’ most well-recognized teams, spoke of a new possibility: leaving the NCAA altogether.<br /><br />The idea that the biggest schools could abandon the NCAA was little more than backroom speculation during the recent college shake-ups, but it hit the mainstream when John Calipari, the charismatic head coach of the University of Kentucky men's basketball team, floated the idea last spring. Calipari, ever the provocateur, predicted that the large schools would consolidate into four major conferences and <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2faol.sportingnews.com%2fncaa-basketball%2fstory%2f2012-03-05%2fkentucky-coach-john-calipari-ive-got-maybe-the-best-job-in-basketball">break away from the NCAA</a> before his career was finished.<br /><br />"They’re not going to be around long. The NCAA will not," Calipari told the<em>Sporting News</em>. "Before I retire from coaching, they will no longer oversee college athletics. They will, but it won’t be the four power conferences—they’ll be on their own.”</p><p>A year before, Calipari had suggested that breaking away from the NCAA would allow the biggest schools to institute a stipend system the way they see fit, without it being derailed by the smaller schools or the NCAA. It would also, he said, result in <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ukathletics.com%2fblog%2f2011%2f06%2fcalipari-proposes-super-conferences-to-solve-current-issues.html">far more money</a> for the schools.<br /><br />"All that television, all that revenue goes back to the schools," Calipari said. "You probably have $10 million that would go directly to the schools, to their academics and not have anything to do with athletics. You'd be able to give that living expense to all your athletes.”<br /><br />School presidents are loath to discuss the idea of breaking away from the NCAA, though several have indicated that the largest football programs could soon split into their own division. But that doesn’t mean high-level administrators aren’t talking having quiet conversations about leaving the NCAA behind, especially given the amount of money at stake.</p><p>“That’s absolutely a feasible option,” Bilas said. “There are things being talked about now that have never been talked about before. The big schools want to operate the way they see fit. If they can do that inside the NCAA structure, I think that’s preferable. But of course they’re thinking about it. They did it in football. We’re talking billions of dollars here. The amount of money that’s at stake, of course they’re considering it.”</p><p>Such a break would not be unprecedented. In 1979, the College Football Association, a coalition of the biggest NCAA football programs, attempted to negotiate a national television contract for its members with NBC. The NCAA, involved in its own television negotiations, put its foot down, saying it alone had the authority to negotiate television contracts for members, which it restricted to no more than one televised game per year. The University of Oklahoma and University of Georgia sued the NCAA, claiming it had violated federal antitrust law, and the Supreme Court agreed. The ruling allowed the schools and their conferences to negotiate their own television rights deals and effectively split the largest schools from the NCAA for football purposes. (Even today, the NCAA does not regulate the championship and postseason for the Football Bowl Subdivision, college football’s top division. It is the only sport for which that is true.)</p><p>Without control over football or a cut of the revenues generated by television, bowls or championships, the NCAA depends almost solely on the end of season men’s basketball tournament for revenue. And does the tournament ever generate revenue. In 2010, the NCAA reached an 14-year agreement, worth $10.8 billion, with CBS and Turner Sports to televise, for the first time, every one of the tournament’s games. If the largest schools, which, with the help of the Bowl Championship Series, just crafted a football playoff, figured out a way to manage an event similar to the NCAA Tournament, a full split from the NCAA would become even more lucrative – and even more probable. “It’d make (schools) more money because it all goes straight to them,” Bilas said. “TV would flock to that.”<br /><br />But even if the biggest conferences and schools abandoned the NCAA, what would stop them from perpetuating the status quo that avoids paying the athletes on which it would depend? After all, much of the support for paying players from coaches, Calipari included, is in the form of the stipend, and while that is an improvement over the current situation, it still leaves the players voiceless in the process. The claims that exist now -- that players are amateurs or that such a system would be unsustainable -- would still exist, even if the money was greater and the NCAA restrictions were no longer present. Wouldn't universities, awash in even more cash, want to hold onto it just the same?<br /><br />When Bilas was a senior on Duke University's basketball team, a former player-turned-activist approached him and his teammates about boycotting the 1986 Final Four. The players, under the proposed protest, would suit up and take the court like normal, but when the game was to begin, they would refuse to take the court, a show of symbolic unity against the NCAA.<br /><br />“My senior year, he came to me, he wanted us to boycott the Final Four,” Bilas said. “I said sure, but can’t we do it next year? I’m playing in it this year."</p><p>The protest never materialized, and similar efforts that have been bandied about since haven't either. The problem, Bilas said, is that athletes view college sports as a gateway, a mere stepping stone, to the professional ranks. Rocking the boat and missing a once-in-a-lifetime chance at the Final Four or a championship over a compensation issue that likely won’t change while that player is in college is hardly a rational decision.</p><p>“If you’re an athlete, you’re saying, ‘I’m only going to be here for four years,’” Bilas said. “These are issues that have lasted for almost 100 years. It’s going to take an athlete with a lot of foresight and a lot of guts and a long view beyond themselves to do that.”</p><p>An unwillingness to act is hardly the only barrier to student protest or organization. Because they are not recognized as employees, players receive no rights under federal or state labor laws.</p><p>“They don’t have any rights under federal labor laws,” Jeffrey Kessler, a labor attorney who has represented both the National Football League Players Association and the National Basketball Association Players Association in labor disputes, said. “They don’t get to form a union, strike, collectively bargain, file unfair labor practice complaints. That’s not available to college athletes.”</p><p>What athletes can do, Kessler said, is form an association that can represent them in class-action lawsuits. “There has been some effort at this, to file antitrust cases against the various restrictions the NCAA imposes to basically exploit the athletes without paying them,” Kessler said, later adding that “there are good (legal) arguments that Division I football is basically a business, and that students are exploited as workers. And therefore schools should be free to compensate athletes in any manner that they want to, without NCAA restrictions.”</p><p>Former players have begun challenging different NCAA restrictions in court. In 2009, former University of California-Los Angeles basketball star Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA, claiming his scholarship agreement did not grant it use of his likeness in video games, commercials, rebroadcasts, and merchandise sales “in perpetuity” without compensation. The lawsuit, now a class-action complaint, seeks to <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fusatoday30.usatoday.com%2fsports%2fcollege%2fstory%2f2012-08-31%2fncaa-lawsuit-seeks-to-change-player-compensation%2f57490678%2f1">change the way athletes are compensated</a> for use of their likeness both during and after college, and if the NCAA seeks to uphold its amateur values, the suit says, the compensation could be “temporarily held in trust for those individuals until cessation of their collegiate careers.” The suit wants players to receive 50 percent of television revenues and one-third of revenues from video games.<br /><br />Another lawsuit, dismissed by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in June but reintroduced in July, is challenging NCAA scholarship restrictions, again claiming a violation of antitrust law.</p><p>Meanwhile, organizations like the National Collegiate Players Association have come to the aide of players to fight for their rights and protections. The NCPA is not currently seeking to unionize players, but it is pushing alternatives such as the Student-Athlete Bill of Rights, the first version of which was <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fthinkprogress.org%2falyssa%2f2012%2f10%2f01%2f928821%2fnew-california-law-requires-schools-to-maintain-scholarships-for-college-athletes-who-get-hurt%2f">signed into law</a> by California Gov. Jerry Brown last year. The California law, based on NCPA models, provides better scholarship and health protections to athletes at California’s largest colleges and universities.</p><p>Others, like University of Illinois professor Michael LeRoy, are examining ways college athletes could organize and associate even without full labor protections. LeRoy published a research paper that argues college athletes operate in an <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwisconsinlawreview.org%2fwp-content%2ffiles%2f1-LeRoy.pdf">“invisible labor market</a>” and function as employees, and as such, they should have the right to bargain collectively. His proposal to fix that – tailored specifically for college athletes -- would not allow athletes to bargain over wages and would not afford them the right to strike, but it would allow bargaining and arbitration on other issues, such as health protections and scholarships. The mere threat of organization, LeRoy argues, could cause the NCAA to grant players more of a say in the system.</p><p>LeRoy described his proposal as a “piecemeal” reform that would lead to a more vibrant and complete conversation about athletes’ rights in the future.</p><p>“As much as I think the NCAA is pretending that these football players are student-athletes and amateurs, especially at big programs, that’s an immovable concept,” LeRoy said. “And if that’s the case, the question becomes, how do you give them non-monetary forms of compensation that do benefit them? I think that would set up a conversation for future generations to say, ‘What the heck? This isn’t amateur athletics at all, so let’s not pretend anymore.’”</p><p>But LeRoy says he is pessimistic about the organizing of athletes. Because of that, he thinks changing the status quo in college sports will ultimately come from outside the game, and from an unlikely place: state legislatures.<br /><br />As far back as 1988, the Nebraska state legislature approved a law that would allow the University of Nebraska, a football powerhouse, to pay a stipend to its players if other states in the Big XII, the conference Nebraska belonged to until 2011, passed similar laws. The legislation was vetoed by then-governor Kay Orr.</p><p>State Sen. Ernie Chambers revived the legislation in 2003, and then-governor Mike Johanns pledged to sign that version if it passed. It never did. In recent years, similar legislation has been introduced in Ohio, California and Utah, but none of the proposals passed (though California did pass the aforementioned Student-Athlete Bill of Rights).</p><p>LeRoy, however, believes that as the business of college athletics continues to grow, those efforts will continue.</p><p>“At some point, this money-making beast is just going to fall under its own weight, where lawmakers either at the federal or state level are going to say it’s kind of ridiculous that players don’t get anything out of this,” he said. “That’s conjecture, but that’s where I think change has to come from.”</p><p>The key to gaining even more traction in those debates goes back to the definition of student-athlete, and whether athletes are students or employees.</p><p>“Everything about college athletes indicates that they’re more like an employee,” Bilas said. “You go when they say, you play when they say, you practice when they say. That’s what employees do,” LeRoy agreed.</p><p>One way state or federal lawmakers could enhance the rights of athletes, he said, was “to literally open up their state wage and hour laws and define Division I football as a compensable form of employment.” That might be a radical step, he admitted, “but when you look at the legal condition of employment, there’s little or no trouble in qualifying this activity for compensation.”</p><p>A similar fight has helped graduate students gained labor protections. The National Labor Relations Board ruled last year that graduate students served a dual purpose – they weren’t purely students or employees – and that ruling granted them protections under state labor laws. In multiple states, graduate students who also work for their university are allowed to collectively bargain for wages and benefits, and it is <a href="https://ch1prd0511.outlook.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=ILPBJN8xOUGQeAs23LC_dvq1hWlizc8IHYuY0jRwsnuM-23rfxY3IL3xelQzqQmaCqearZrj6q8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fthinkprogress.org%2falyssa%2f2012%2f07%2f25%2f583891%2fgraduate-students-college-athletes-and-the-fight-for-labor-rights%2f">hard to draw a distinction</a> between the dual purpose they serve and the purpose served by athletes in the big business of college sports.</p><p>Using legislation and labor law to define athletes as employees, or at least as partial employees, could at least push some of that money toward the people whose backs bear the brunt of making it all work.<br /><br />How college athletes will break the NCAA spell of amateurism is still unclear. But the entire debate no longer has a feel of fatalism to it. There is growing sentiment that the system is broken, that arguments for the sanctity of amateurism or the sustainability of the status quo are not credible justifications for a business built on the back of free labor.<br /><br />Similar arguments against the rights of athletes, Bilas noted, were made when the Olympics abandoned the amateur model and when Major League Baseball’s reserve clause was disputed in the Supreme Court. The NCAA, he added, is unable to enunciate exactly what “amateurism” brings to its product, particularly when a growing chorus of doubters is beginning to see through the lie.<br /><br />“Their argument has no principle behind it,” Bilas said. “What is the principle behind denying athletes the same rights everyone else has?”<br /><br />“The whole thing,” he added, “is a sorry sham.”</p> Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:04:00 -0800Travis Waldron, AlterNet783406 at http://www.alternet.orgCorporate Accountability and WorkPlaceCorporate Accountability and WorkPlaceEducationcollegencaapaying atheleteswagesAIG Threatens to Sue the Government for Keeping it Alivehttp://www.alternet.org/aig-threatens-sue-government-keeping-it-alive
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">AIG’s stock price at the time of the bailout was “slightly north of zero.”</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>American International Group, the mega-insurer that nearly collapsed in 2008 before being bailed out, is now considering joining a lawsuit filed by its former chairman against the federal government. The lawsuit, filed in 2011 by former AIG chairman Maurice Greenberg, contends that the federal government violated the Fifth Amendment by taking too large a share in the company and charging it excessive interest rates on the $182 billion in loans it gave the company.</p><p>Greenberg, who led AIG for nearly four decades, says the deal crushed the company’s shareholders, and he will make the same case to AIG’s board of directors to <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/rescued-by-a-bailout-a-i-g-may-sue-its-savior/">urge them to join his lawsuit</a>, the New York Times reports:</p><blockquote><p>The board of A.I.G. will meet on Wednesday to consider joining a $25 billion shareholder lawsuit against the government, court records show. The lawsuit does not argue that government help was not needed. It contends that the onerous nature of the rescue — the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal’s high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer’s Wall Street clients — deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for “public use, without just compensation.”</p></blockquote><p>In recent weeks, AIG has run a series of ads on network and cable television across the country thanking American taxpayers for saving it. AIG repaid the $182 billion, and the government sold its last stake in the company in August. The ads tout AIG’s role in recoveries from natural disasters, including $144 million in insurance claims it paid after the Joplin, Missouri tornadoes and $2 billion in claims it expects to pay to Hurricane Sandy victims. It also boasts that it is the “lead insurer” of the new World Trade Center and that taxpayers turned a profit on the bailout.</p><p>AIG CEO Robert H. Benmosche accompanied the ads with a letter to the New York Times, in which he wrote, “It is a result of our employees’ determination to repay America that A.I.G. not only supports our customers and employees but also contributes directly to the financial stability of the United States. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/opinion/the-bailout-of-aig.html?_r=2&amp;smid=tw-share&amp;">Thank you, America</a>.”</p><p>While Greenberg says the bailout hurt shareholders, government officials that spoke to the Times anonymously said the shareholders would have fared worse going through bankruptcy. And though Greenberg is correct in his reading of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits government seizure of private property without fair compensation, AIG’s stock price at the time of the bailout was “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/11/22/374472/former-aig-ceo-sues-claiming-taxpayers-need-to-pony-up-25-billion-more/">slightly north of zero</a>.”</p> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:53:00 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress773207 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & PoliticsaiginsurerThree Economic Facts from December That Prove "Uncertainty" Isn't the Problemhttp://www.alternet.org/economy/three-economic-facts-december-prove-uncertainty-isnt-problem
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The zombie lie will never die, but here are a few new bullet holes.</div></div></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-story-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/uncertainty.jpg" /></div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>In recent months, as the United States approached the so-called “fiscal cliff,” lawmakers and business executives argued that the supposed uncertainty brought on by the cliff’s combined automatic spending cuts and tax increases was <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/01/03/1395321/international-monetary-fund-admits-it-severely-underestimated-cost-of-austerity/">depressing America’s economic growth</a>. It has made a convenient narrative for chief executives <a href="http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/CEOs-uncertainty-confidence/2012/12/26/id/469026">who want to cut government spending</a> and corporate taxes and institute policies more favorable to their companies.</p><p>Even in the wake of the deal to avert the fiscal cliff, which adds certainty to tax rates if not to spending cuts, CEOs are making the same argument. There is only one problem: it doesn’t appear to be true. Three indicators from December — job growth, holiday sales, and housing — prove that the uncertainty argument doesn’t hold water:</p><blockquote><p>JOBS REPORT: The economy <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/01/04/1396421/january-2013-jobs-report/">added 155,000</a> jobs in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report released this morning. That was in line with projections and equal to the monthly average over the last year. Hourly earnings also rose, and the unemployment rate remained constant from November. In all, it offered no indication that the supposed uncertainty surrounding the end-of-year fiscal cliff drove down hiring over the month.</p><p>HOLIDAY SALES: Holiday sales over Thanksgiving weekend rose <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-25/shoppers-lift-thanksgiving-weekend-spending-13-to-59-1-billion.html">13 percent</a> in stores and online, not far from the 16 percent rise over the same weekend in 2011. And despite forecasts in mid-December that holiday sales were slumping, retailers reported a <a href="http://www.northjersey.com/news/185628962_Holiday_sales_figures_merrier_than_expected__healthy__by__one_measure.html">4.5 percent jump</a> that actually beat earlier projections. Auto manufacturers, meanwhile, had their strongest sales month since 2007.</p><p>HOUSING: Housing prices continued to rise in October (the latest data available) according to recent reports. The S&amp;P/Case Shiller index showed that prices <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100339474/Home_Prices_Post_Gains_as_Recovery_Keeps_Pace">rose 0.7 percent</a>, beating the 0.5 percent increase projected by economists. In the 20 cities the index follows, prices rose 4.3 percent from October 2011. The December jobs report also showed that 30,000 construction jobs were created last month, another indication that the housing market has rebounded. “The housing turnaround continues,” the Washington Post’s Jim Tankersley tweeted. “<a href="https://twitter.com/jimtankersley/status/287191396656508928">It’s driving job growth now</a>.”</p></blockquote><p>Of course, “uncertainty” is really just the CEOs’ way of asking Congress for corporate tax cuts and massive spending cuts. But their preferred budget policies have done plenty to slow down the economy. The public sector shed another 13,000 jobs in December, and it has lost more than 600,000 jobs since the end of the recession. Nonpartisan agencies from the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/23/489118/congressional-budget-office-report-proves-spending-cuts-wont-boost-economic-growth/">Congressional Budget Office</a> to the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/01/03/1395321/international-monetary-fund-admits-it-severely-underestimated-cost-of-austerity/">International Monetary Fund</a>, meanwhile, have warned Congress about the perils of further spending cuts.</p> Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:24:00 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress771354 at http://www.alternet.orgEconomyEconomyNews & PoliticseconomyRepublicans Try to Hide Study That Shows Tax Cuts for the Rich Spur Inequalityhttp://www.alternet.org/republicans-try-hide-study-shows-tax-cuts-rich-spur-inequality
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">How Republicans in Congress almost killed a non-partisan study refuting GOP talking points. </div></div></div>
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<div class="field field-name-field-story-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/images/managed/storyimages_1341276087_gopsplit.jpg" /></div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; ">The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report in September that showed that cutting tax rates for the wealthiest Americans did not spur economic or job growth, refuting a key Republican justification for the party’s continued obsession with maintaining the tax cuts for the wealthy they passed in 2003. But when Senate Republicans aired seemingly minor complaints about it, the agency <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html?smid=tw-share" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">quietly withdrew the report</a>, even as its economic team advised it to stand firm.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; ">The report, as ThinkProgress reported in September, found that tax cuts for the rich<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/17/857861/study-tax-cuts-rich-no-growth/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">spurred income inequality</a>, not economic growth. “There is not conclusive evidence, however, to substantiate a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth,” the report stated. “However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; ">The withdrawal came after Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) aired minor quibbles about language the report used that he viewed as “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=0" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">politically freighted</a>,” the New York Times reports:</p><blockquote style="margin: 10px 50px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 22.5px; "><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; ">Senate Republican aides said they protested both the tone of the report and its findings. Aides to Mr. McConnell <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; ">presented a bill of particulars to the research service that included objections to the use of the term “Bush tax cuts” and the report’s reference to “tax cuts for the rich,”</strong> which Republicans contended was politically freighted.</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; ">Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee also aired methodological questions about the study, a spokesperson told the New York Times. But a Times source inside the CRS said that the report was pulled even as its top economic team, including the study’s author, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=0" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">stood by its finding</a>. Outside economists, like Vice President Biden’s former adviser Jared Bernstein, said the study was methodologically sound and that the GOP attack on it “sounds to me like a complete political hit job.”</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.5px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; ">Despite Republican efforts to block the findings of the CRS study, others have <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/12/840641/tax-cuts-rich-economic-growth/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">shown similar results</a>. Even Republicans have <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/04/381510/upton-cant-explain-tax-cuts-jobs/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">admitted</a> in the past that the Bush tax cuts didn’t spur the job and economic growth the party promised, and if nonpartisan studies aren’t enough, history makes the same case. Since Republicans began instituting supply-side policies under President Reagan, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/02/627731/charts-supply-side-growth/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">growth has lagged</a> and<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/31/141611/income-inequality-egypt/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">income inequality has surged</a> as the wealthiest Americans make more money while<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/18/159261/tax-disparity-chart/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">paying less in taxes</a>.</p> Fri, 02 Nov 2012 07:08:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress737561 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & Politicsgoptax cutsPhoenix Mayor Attempts to Live on a Food Stamp Budget: 'I'm Tired, and It's Hard To Focus'http://www.alternet.org/food/phoenix-mayor-attempts-live-food-stamp-budget-im-tired-and-its-hard-focus
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The mayor accepted a challenge from a local activist group during Hunger Awareness Month.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> <p> </p><p>When local activist groups challenged Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month, he took them up on the offer and found out just how hard it was. Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.</p><p>By day four, Stanton noted that he was “tired” and “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/greg-stanton/snap-awareness-week-my-food-diary-what-its-like-to-live-on-food-stamps-for-29wee/484143658270276">it’s hard to focus</a>” after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:</p><blockquote><p>OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I’m surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. <strong>I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus</strong>. I can’t go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. <strong>You can’t use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I’m facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table</strong>, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It’s only for a week, so I’ve got a decent attitude. <strong>If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn’t be so pleasant</strong>.</p></blockquote><p>Watch a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/greg-stanton-phoenix-mayor-food-stamps_n_1915608.html">local news report</a> about Stanton’s challenge, via Huffington Post’s Bonnie Kavoussi:</p><br /> <p>According to Stanton’s Facebook page, the city he governs ranks <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/greg-stanton/snap-awareness-week-my-food-diary-what-its-like-to-live-on-food-stamps-for-29wee/484143658270276">34th-worst</a> among America’s 100 largest metro areas in terms of hunger, and one-in-four Arizona children are food insecure. Across the nation, there are more than 46 million people receiving SNAP benefits.</p><p>Despite the challenges presented by poverty and hunger, Republicans have proposed cuts to the programs that help struggling families afford food. The House GOP budget could <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/22/450050/house-republican-budget-could-cut-off-food-assistance-for-millions-of-low-income-americans/">kick millions out of SNAP</a> and hundreds of thousands of children <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/25/470967/gop-school-lunch-cuts/">out of school lunch programs</a>, exacerbating the high rates of food insecurity America’s families are already facing.</p> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:45:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress717953 at http://www.alternet.orgFoodActivismEconomyFoodfoodfood stampsStudy: U.S. Schools Still Largely Segregated Along Racial, Economic Lineshttp://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/study-us-schools-still-largely-segregated-along-racial-economic-lines
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Nearly 60 years after American schools were desegregated by a landmark Supreme Court decision, they are still largely segregated along racial and socio-economic lines, an analysis of Department of Education found.</p><p>American schools have a larger share of African American and Latino students than ever before, but students from those groups are likely to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/education/segregation-prominent-in-schools-study-finds.html?ref=us&amp;_moc.semityn.www">attend schools with few white students</a>, the study from the University of California, Los Angeles found, as the New York Times reports:</p><blockquote><p>Across the country, <strong>43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white</strong>, according to the report, released on Wednesday by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.</p><p>And more than one in seven black and Latino students attend schools where fewer than 1 percent of their classmates are white, according to the group’s analysis of enrollment data from 2009-2010, the latest year for which federal statistics are available.</p></blockquote><p>The segregation isn’t limited to race: across the country, schools with high minority populations often have high low-income populations as well, and “typical black or Latino student attends a school where almost two out of every three classmates come from low-income families,” the Times reports.</p><p>The segregation of American schools has perpetuated and exacerbated the education gap that exists between black and Latino students and their white and Asian counterparts. American students from less-educated, lower-income backgrounds are <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/09/11/831261/report-america-is-failing-to-send-students-from-less-educated-households-to-college/">less likely to go to college</a> than they are in other countries, and even high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds are <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/17/486244/chart-income-inequality-education/">far less likely</a> to complete college than similar students from upper-income backgrounds. That has suppressed economic mobility for blacks and Latinos, two groups already disadvantaged in the American economy.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/09/20/879011/american-schools-segregation/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:58:00 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress713735 at http://www.alternet.orgCivil LibertiesEconomyEducationracismschoolseducationsegregationWhy I Wish I Didn't Watch Football And All Its Brutalityhttp://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-i-wish-i-didnt-watch-football-and-all-its-brutality
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>I suppose I grew up with football as much as, or more than, any other sport. I never played a competitive down — baseball was my game — but football was what we played on the sandlot, and though my hometown is no Dillon, Texas, I started spending Friday nights at my future high school’s games sometime in elementary school. Saturdays were, for as long as I can remember, reserved for college football; Sundays, for the National Football League.</p><p>Those are blissful memories, before I knew about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, before thousands of former players sued the NFL over concussions sustained playing the game, before I learned that playing football even at the grade-school level can cause cognitive problems for the rest of a boy’s life.</p><p>I realized this weekend, during college football’s opening weekend, that I can’t watch the game the way I used to. Not after a summer filled with reports about the dangers of the game, a suicide perhaps caused by concussion-related depression, and a dispute over player safety. I notice every bone-crushing hit, every whip of the head, every helmet-to-helmet clash in a way I never have before, and I wince not just because my favorite team’s best player might be hurt, but because somewhere, at some level, young men are racking up seemingly routine hits that will affect them <em>for the rest of their lives</em>.</p><p>The thing that makes me wince hardest, though, is that I still watch.</p><p>Football isn’t our most beautiful game, but it is our most pure. It combines speed, grace, and unadulterated brutality in a way that no other sport does, and there is something uniquely attractive about that. But I’m starting to question whether I <em>should</em> find that attractive, or whether I should even watch at all.</p><p>I’ve already made the decision that my hypothetical future son, should I have one, won’t be allowed on a football field. The proven dangers are too risky, the unproven dangers riskier still. I don’t want my child damaged beyond repair by a brutal hit; even more, I don’t want him cognitively mangled by repeated, constant bodily abuse.</p><p>And yet, for some reason, I spend hours watching other people’s children do exactly that.</p><p>At what point does it become too much? At what point is our game more than just a weekend break from reality, a Friday night under the lights, a Saturday afternoon on campus, a Sunday on the couch? At what point do we — do I — become too conscious of the damage caused by the sheer violence of the game we love? At what point do we see our Junior Seaus and Dave Duersons as modern day gladiators who sacrificed their well-being, and ultimately, their lives for our entertainment? At what point do we realize that our Matt Saracens are jeopardizing their futures by playing a game they hope beyond hope will be their futures?</p><p>I don’t have the answers to those questions. I don’t think anyone does. I watched football this Saturday, and I will watch it next Saturday too. When the NFL starts, I’ll be watching, rooting on the players on my fantasy teams and my beloved, if beleaguered, Miami Dolphins.</p><p>For the first time, though, I will be troubled by the game, by the injuries, by the endless brutality. I will be worried knowing that across the country, hundreds of thousands of men and boys who won’t ever get a scholarship or a paycheck will be killing themselves to live for one moment of gridiron glory. I will be cognizant of the fact that my entertainment is derived from a sport that is slowly but surely killing its participants. I will be scared that one day, I’m going to watch someone go down and never get up.</p><p>And yet, I will still watch.</p><p>I will rationalize the game by repeating that football is inherently dangerous, and that no matter how safe we try to make it, it will always be so. But now that we are learning just how inherently dangerous it is — not just to knees, elbows, and shoulders, but to brains and futures — I keep wondering: is there a point where it all becomes too much?</p> Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:11:00 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress704603 at http://www.alternet.orgCultureGenderNews & Politicsnational football leaguenflfootballJoint Chiefs Chairman, Special Ops Officers Condemn ‘Shameful’ Anti-Obama Groupshttp://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/joint-chiefs-chairman-special-ops-officers-condemn-shameful-anti-obama-groups
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The Republican Party spent all day Tuesday debating and drafting the party’s official platform, and by the end of the day, it approved a draft of the “most conservative platform in modern history.” After enshrining its support for radical immigration, abortion, and women’s health laws, the GOP made sure to include support for a provision that would make it <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/gop-platform-spoiler-alert-no-exception-rape-incest-abortion-plank" target="_blank">virtually impossible</a> for the federal government to raise taxes in the future:</p><blockquote><p>“We call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority for any tax increase with exceptions for only war and national emergencies, and imposing a cap limiting spending to historical average percentage of GDP so that future Congresses cannot balance the budget by raising taxes.”</p></blockquote><p>Requiring a 60-vote supermajority to raise taxes would make doing so virtually impossible, as the GOP’s repeated use of the filibuster in the Democratic-controlled Senate has made painfully evident. States that require a supermajority to raise taxes, like California, have created a <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904938,00.html" target="_blank">fiscal disaster</a>, and such a plan ignores a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/02/628711/economist-wide-consensus-revenue/" target="_blank">broad consensus</a> among economists that tax increases, as well as spending cuts, will be necessary to reduce the nation’s debt and eventually balance its budget.</p><p>The supermajority requirement isn’t the only destructive part of the platform proposal, which is similar to the Balanced Budget Amendment the GOP pushed during the debt ceiling debate last year. That plan, according to studies, would have <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/11/09/365327/study-gops-balanced-budget-amendment-would-double-unemployment-rate-put-15-million-out-of-work/" target="_blank">doubled the nation’s unemployment rate</a>, put 15 million people out of work, and required spending cuts that would <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/files/11-15-11bud.pdf" target="_blank">destroy the social safety net</a>.</p><p>As for the idea that the GOP would contemplate raising taxes to pay for war, that too is ludicrous. A decade ago, the GOP took control of both sides of Congress and the White House and inherited a budget surplus. The party promptly passed <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/07/238602/chart-debt-without-bush-tax-cuts/" target="_blank">massive tax cuts</a> immediately before putting two wars on the nation’s credit card, creating the train wreck that is America’s fiscal situation right now.</p><p>Republicans have spent the last three years promising to reduce the debt and create jobs. This policy, like the party’s <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/20/448664/gop-fails-to-reduce-the-debt/" target="_blank">budget</a> and its “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/27/355181/report-house-gops-budget-cuts-370k-jobs/" target="_blank">job creation</a>” policies, prove the party isn’t capable of addressing either.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:09:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress697389 at http://www.alternet.orgElection 2014Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theoriesCatholic Nuns Send Romney Letter, Call Out His 'Woeful Lack Of Knowledge’ About The Poorhttp://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/catholic-nuns-send-romney-letter-call-out-his-woeful-lack-knowledge-about-poor
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> </p><p>The group of Catholic nuns who launched the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/18/501408/catholic-nuns-kick-off-nine-state-bus-tour-to-protest-house-republican-budget-cuts/">Nuns On A Bus tour</a> to shed light on the effects the House Republican budget would have on the poor turned its attention to the GOP’s presidential candidate this week, challenging Mitt Romney to join them for a day to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/08/658741/nuns-challenge-romney/">learn about the plight of the poor</a>. NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization, issued the call on Wednesday and was <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/09/664311/franciscan-friars-romney-poor/">joined yesterday</a> by the Franciscan Action Network, an organization of friars and sisters.</p><p>The nuns have now sent a letter to the Romney campaign, asking the candidate to join them during his current swing through Ohio. The letter again challenges Romney’s misleading television ads about welfare reform, which the nuns say “demonize the families we serve and reflect a woeful lack of knowledge about the challenges faced by tens of millions of Americans”:</p><blockquote><p>We are deeply troubled by your campaign’s recent advertisements and statements about welfare, which we believe demonize the families we serve and reflect a woeful lack of knowledge about the challenges faced by tens of millions of Americans. By accepting our invitation, we hope that you will have the opportunity to see firsthand the struggles of those in need and have the compassion to desist your campaign’s harsh attacks.</p><p>We are all God’s children and equal in God’s eyes. Efforts to divide us by class or score political points at the expense of the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters reveal the worst side of our country’s politics. Please accept our invitation to witness and to serve.</p></blockquote><p>The letter is signed by NETWORK’s executive director, Sister Simone Campbell, who told ThinkProgress this week that Romney “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/08/658741/nuns-challenge-romney/">doesn’t have a clue</a>” about the situation facing America’s poorest citizens or the effect his policies would have on them. “He thinks they’re lazy,” Campbell said Wednesday. “It is hard work to keep things together when you’re poor. He doesn’t have a clue. Let him talk to them, and maybe they’ll touch his heart. And his mind too.”</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/10/672391/catholic-nuns-send-letter-to-romney-challenging-his-woeful-lack-of-knowledge-about-the-poor/">http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/10/672391/catholic-nuns-send-letter-to-...</a></div></div></div>
Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:04:00 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress690953 at http://www.alternet.orgCorporation That Paid Nothing In Taxes For Four Years Tells Congress It Pays Too Much In Taxeshttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/1036277/corporation_that_paid_nothing_in_taxes_for_four_years_tells_congress_it_pays_too_much_in_taxes
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Over a four years period from 2008 to 2011, Corning Inc. was one of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460519/major-corporations-no-taxes-four-year/">26 companies</a> that managed to avoid paying any American income taxes, even though it earned nearly $3 billion during that time. In fact, according to Citizens For Tax Justice, the company received a <a href="http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2012/07/corning_pays_zero_federal_taxe.php">$4 million refund</a> from 2008 to 2010. That didn’t stop Susan Ford, a senior executive at the company, from telling the House Ways and Means Committee this week that America’s high corporate tax rate was <a href="http://waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Ford_Testimony.pdf">putting her company at a disadvantage</a>:</p>
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American manufacturers are at a distinct disadvantage to competitors headquartered in other countries. Specifically, foreign manufacturers uniformly face a lower corporate tax rate than U.S. manufacturers, and virtually all operate under territorial systems which encourage investment both abroad and at home.</p></blockquote>
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Ford told the committee that Corning paid an effective tax rate of 36 percent in 2011, but as CTJ notes, she is counting taxes on profits earned overseas that haven’t yet been paid and won’t be unless the company decides to bring the money back to the United States. Corning’s actual tax rate in 2011, according to CTJ’s analysis, was actually <a href="http://www.ctj.org/pdf/notax2012.pdf">negative 0.2 percent</a>.</p>
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The territorial system Ford testified in favor of would actually encourage the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/16/520431/how-romney-would-make-it-easier-for-american-companies-to-avoid-taxes-outsource-jobs/">offshoring of profits</a> earned by American companies, thereby reducing the amount they pay in taxes even more. And rather than helping remove a disadvantage that prevents companies from creating jobs, an economic analysis of such a tax system found that it could actually cost the United States as many as <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2012/07/hanlon_outsourcing.html">800,000 jobs</a>.</p>
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The United States does, indeed, have one of the highest marginal corporate tax rates in the world. In reality, however, few corporations pay it, and the nation’s effective tax rate is <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/30/456005/reminder-corporate-taxes-very-low/">far lower</a> than the rate in other developed countries.</p> Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:04:15 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress680059 at http://www.alternet.orgtaxeseconomycorporationsBritain’s Oldest and Largest Black Newspaper Denied Credentials To Cover Olympicshttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/1033841/britain%E2%80%99s_oldest_and_largest_black_newspaper_denied_credentials_to_cover_olympics
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The organization in charge of issuing media credentials at the 2012 London Olympics, which begin in 10 days, has <a href="http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/access-denied-voice-readers-furious-over-olympic-snub">denied the request</a> filed by Great Britain’s oldest black newspaper, sparking outrage across the country. <em>The Voice</em>, which is celebrating its 30-year anniversary this year, published an article last week notifying readers that the British Olympic Association, which is in charge of credentialing, had denied its request to cover the Games.</p>
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The paper was denied because of an “extraordinary interest and demand from UK media,” the BOA told the paper, even as the organization has “led a high-profile campaign highlighting London’s cosmopolitan culture, and the games itself were won on the back of the city’s rich diversity.” The decision sparked protests on social networks and <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/give-the-voice-media-accreditation-for-london-2012-olympics?utm_campaign=en_gbr_gen&amp;utm_content=petition&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_source=social_media&amp;utm_term=voice_">a petition drive</a> led by activist Zita Holbourne, who told the paper she was “<a href="http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/access-denied-voice-readers-furious-over-olympic-snub">furious</a>” over BOA’s decision:</p>
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Holbourne said: “<strong>I was furious. There has been a catalogue of errors and issues around the Olympics and this is just one more thing</strong>.</p>
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“If the BOA are using blanket criteria to assess whether or not a publication is suitable for accreditation has a disproportionate negative impact on smaller and specialist publications and, obviously, The Voice is a specialist publication.</p>
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“<strong>Given the number of black athletes that are competing in the Olympics that Team GB rely on for Olympic success, no accreditation for the biggest-selling black newspaper is just atrocious</strong>.”</p></blockquote>
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The International Olympic Committee has fought to make the London Olympics the most diverse ever held. For the first time in history, every Olympic team has <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/07/12/515936/for-first-time-in-history-saudi-arabia-adds-women-to-olympic-team/">at least one female member</a> after the IOC negotiated the addition of two female athletes to the Saudi Arabian team — the kingdom’s first-ever female representatives. South African runner Oscar Pistorius, meanwhile, will try to become the first person with artificial legs to win a medal since 1906.</p>
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But for Britain’s black journalists and the community they serve, the decision harkens back to past fights with British authorities. Lester Holloway, a former <em>Voice</em> reporter, told the paper it reminded him of times when “we had to fight the parliamentary authorities to get accreditation to cover for the House of Commons. There were no black journalists at that time. It was a hard fought battle that went on for number of years and eventually we were allowed in. The fact that we are here again in 2012, shows how <a href="http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/access-denied-voice-readers-furious-over-olympic-snub">behind the times the Olympic authorities are</a>.”</p> Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:51:57 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress582852 at http://www.alternet.orgraceolympicsLocal Governments Have Cut 130,000 Teaching Jobs in the Last Yearhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/1024791/local_governments_have_cut_130%2C000_teaching_jobs_in_the_last_year
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The last three years have been the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460380/worst-ever-public-sector-job-loss/">worst on record</a> for public sector job losses, and the fact that more than 700,000 public employees have been laid off is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/the-incredible-shrinking-american-government-169k-jobs-gone-in-a-year/259505/">holding back</a> the nation’s economic recovery. In the last 12 months, local governments have lost more than 130,000 teaching jobs alone, according to monthly jobs data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.</p>
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In June 2011, local governments employed more than 7.9 million teachers. A year later, that number has <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/over-100000-local-teaching-jobs-have-been-lost-in-the-last-year-2012-7#ixzz1zqoQ8uLN">dropped to 7.8 million</a>, as Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal notes. Since June 2008, when local governments employed 8.1 million teachers, they have shed more than 300,000 teaching jobs, as this Federal Reserve Economic Data chart shows:</p>
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<img src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/fredgraph.png" width="400" /></p>
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Such cuts obviously have perilous effects for the nation’s education system and long-term economic health, but it hurts the economy in the short-term too. Teachers are disproportionately women, so the cuts affect a subset of worker that already faces <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/10/496961/49-years-after-kennedy-signed-the-equal-pay-act-women-still-earn-77-cents-to-a-mans-dollar/">significant disadvantages</a> in the American workplace, and these losses no doubt played a role in the recession’s <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/03/457649/88-percent-jobs-recession-men/">out-sized impact</a> on <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/06/459744/women-labor-force-participation-drop/">female workers</a>.</p>
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What is worse, though, is that congressional Republicans blocked Democratic efforts to extend aid to state and local governments that would have protected teaching and public safety jobs multiple times over the last two years. Keeping teachers and other public sector employees in the workforce would boost demand to help the economy, so much so that growing the public sector at normal rates (instead of shrinking it at a record pace) would knock a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/01/493669/public-sector-reagan-unemployment/">full point off the unemployment rate</a>.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/06/511994/chart-teacher-jobs-cut/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Fri, 06 Jul 2012 10:41:18 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress582628 at http://www.alternet.orgfederal reserve economicunemploymentwomenfemalerecessionworkeconomyfireteacherseducationSpanking School Children? The 5 Weirdest Things on the Texas GOP Platformhttp://www.alternet.org/story/156055/spanking_school_children_the_5_weirdest_things_on_the_texas_gop_platform
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Here&#039;s a look at the most outrageous beliefs Texas Republicans apparently hold.</div></div></div>
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The Republican Party of Texas <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012-Platform-Final.pdf">released its 2012 platform</a> this month, <a href="http://scatx.com/2012/06/26/the-tx-gops-2012-platform-in-tweets/">outlining its</a><a href="http://scatx.com/2012/06/26/the-tx-gops-2012-platform-in-tweets/">policies</a>on taxation, education, and a host of other issues related to the economy. Texas Republicans, according to the platform, support eliminating the minimum wage and the prevailing wage, doing away with the Department of Education and Department of Energy, and "reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education" — but those aren't even the most damaging positions.</p>
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Here's a look at the five most outrageous beliefs Texas Republicans hold:</p>
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1) <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; ">The party opposes almost all forms of taxation:</strong> The Texas GOP supports "repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment," which instituted a national income tax, and instead favors a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/04/335627/cain-regressive-economists/">wildly regressive</a> national sales tax that would hit low- and middle-income Americans hardest. It also favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent and repealing the capital gains tax and the estate tax, the latter of which it claims is "immoral and should be abolished forever." On the state level, it supports abolishing property and business taxes, and property taxes on inventory, and opposes efforts to institute a state income tax, an Internet sales tax, professional licensing fees, and taxes on real estate transactions. Instead, it supports "shifting the tax burden to a consumption-based tax."</p>
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<strong>2) It supports returning to the gold standard:</strong>"We support the return to the time tested precious metal standard for the U.S. dollar," the platform states, echoing Rep. Ron Paul (R), the state's eccentric congressman and presidential candidate. While returning to "sound money," as the platform calls it, is popular among far right-wing conservatives, it is "<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/20/448357/bernanke-gold-standard/">not feasible</a> for practical and policy reasons," according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Most economists agree that the gold standard <a href="http://www.npr.org/2010/11/13/131297988/gold-standard">never worked</a>and that returning to it now would have <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2010/11/gold_rush.html">disastrous consequences</a> for the American economy.</p>
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<strong>3) It supports privatizing Social Security:</strong> Given that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) called Social Security a "<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/28/306233/rick-perry-social-security-is-a-monstrous-lie-and-a-ponzi-scheme/">Ponzi scheme</a>" during his ill-fated presidential campaign, it may be no surprise that the Texas GOP opposes one of the nation's most successful federal programs. "We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax," the platform says, ignoring that had such a plan been enacted prior to the Great Recession, it would have cost an October 2008 retiree<a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/ss_report.pdf?mobile=nc">tens</a><a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/ss_report.pdf?mobile=nc">of thousands of dollars</a> (and that was before the market bottomed out in 2009). Millions of Americans lost everything in private accounts during the recession, and Social Security was <a href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/baby-boomer-wealth-2009-02.pdf">all they had left</a>.</p>
<p>
<strong>4) It opposes multicultural education and "critical thinking":</strong> "We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive," the platform says, adding that it supports teaching "common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups." In Arizona, where Republicans <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/04/30/94567/arizona-teachers/">banned multicultural programs</a>, students in those programs actually <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/03/21/449044/students-in-arizonas-outlawed-mexican-american-studies-program-outperformed-their-peers/">out-performed their peers</a>. Texas Republicans also believe "controversial theories" such evolution and climate change — which <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2008/01/evolution-overw/">aren't</a> <a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/">controversial</a> at all — "should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced." There's more: the GOP also opposes the teaching of "critical thinking skills" because they "focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."</p>
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<strong>5) It supports corporal punishment in schools:</strong> "Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas," the platform states, adding that teachers and school boards should be given "more authority to deal with disciplinary problems." Actual research, however, shows that corporal punishment is bad for children and their education. Research shows that corporal punishment is "associated with an increase in delinquency, antisocial behavior, and aggression in children," according to the American Psychoanalytic Association, which "<a href="http://apsa.org/About_APsaA/Position_Statements/Physical_Punishment.aspx">strongly condemns</a>" the use of such punishment. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents and schools use other forms of punishment because "corporal punishment is of <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-11/opinion/opinion_toth-abuse_1_corporal-punishment-child-abuse-parents?_s=PM:OPINION">limited effectiveness</a> and has potentially deleterious side effects."</p>
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<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter-->Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. </div></div></div>
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 07:00:01 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress671428 at http://www.alternet.orgTea Party and the RightTea Party and the Righttexasrepublicansgop5 Facts About the Massachusetts Economy Under Mitt Romneyhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/938152/5_facts_about_the_massachusetts_economy_under_mitt_romney
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign whipped out a new number over the weekend to dispute federal government data that ranked Massachusetts 47th in job creation during Romney’s time as governor there <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1206/03/sotu.01.html">Three</a> <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1206/03/sotu.01.html">campaign</a> <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/#VpFlash">surrogates</a>used the Sunday morning news circuit to claim that the state was actually 30th in job growth in Romney’s final year in office.</p>
<p>Of course, moving the state to 30th would still mean it was in the bottom half of the nation, a fact that would seem to fit assertions from local experts that the state’s economy was “below average and often near the bottom” while Romney was governor. Here are five facts about the Massachusetts economy from Romney’s 2003-2007 tenure:</p>
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<p><strong>1) Ranked 47th in job growth</strong>: Despite Romney’s professed expertise in creating jobs, Massachusetts <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/02/232040/romney-obama-massachusetts-jobs/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">ranked 47th in job growth</a> during his time as governor. The state’s total job growth was just 0.9 percent, well behind other high-wage, high-skill economies in New York (2.7), California (4.7), and North Carolina (7.6). The national average, meanwhile, was better than 5 percent.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; ">2) Suffered the second-largest labor force decline in the nation</strong>: Only Louisiana, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, saw a bigger decline in its labor force than Massachusetts during Romney’s tenure as governor. The US Census Bureau estimated that between July 2002 and July 2006, 222,000 more residents left Massachusetts for other states than came to it. That decline largely explains the state’s decreasing unemployment rate (from 5.6 to 4.7 percent) while Romney was in office, according to Northeastern University economics professor Andrew Sum. At the same time, the nation as a whole <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/29/romneys_economic_record/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">added 8 million</a> people to the labor force.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; ">3) Lost 14 percent of its manufacturing jobs</strong>: Massachusetts lost <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/29/romneys_economic_record/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">14 percent of its manufacturing jobs</a> during Romney’s time in office, according to Sum. The loss was double the rate that the nation as a whole lost manufacturing jobs. In 2004, Romney vetoed legislation that would have banned companies doing business with the state from outsourcing jobs to other countries.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; ">4) Experienced “below average” economic growth and was “often near the bottom”</strong>: “There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/08/421055/massachusetts-economy-romney-below-average/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">below average and often near the bottom</a>,” Sum told the Washington Post in February. As a result, the state was more comparable to Rust Belt states like Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio than it was to other high-tech economies it typically competes with.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; "><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; ">5) Piled on more debt than any other state</strong>: Romney left Massachusetts residents with $10,504 in per capita bond debt, the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/16/485035/romney-debt-massachusetts/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">highest of any state</a> in the nation when he left office in 2007. The state ranked second in debt as a percentage of personal income. Romney regularly omits those statistics from his Massachusetts record, instead touting the fact that he balanced the state’s budget (he was constitutionally required to do so). He wouldn’t be much different as president: his proposed tax plan adds <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/22/430396/romney-tax-cut-rich/" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">more than $10 trillion</a> to the national debt.</p></blockquote> Mon, 04 Jun 2012 03:54:32 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress581917 at http://www.alternet.orgmassachusettseconomymitt romneyIncome Gap Spreads: As The Richest Americans Get Richer, The Rest Are Drowning In Debthttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/911643/income_gap_spreads%3A_as_the_richest_americans_get_richer%2C_the_rest_are_drowning_in_debt
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Income inequality <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/31/357001/how-ows-has-already-succeeded/">surged</a> onto the national political radar in 2011, as the 99 Percent Movement focused America on the fact that while the richest Americans’ incomes were skyrocketing, wages remained relatively stagnant for the lower and middle classes. American income inequality is now worse than it is in countries like <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/04/163476/us-unequal-uganda-pakistan/">Ivory Coast and Pakistan</a>, and it may be even worse than it was in<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/19/391998/income-inequality-rome/">Ancient Rome</a>.</p>
<p>That inequality has crushed the middle class and has perilous consequences for the American economy. It is also contributing to another problem: rising debt inequality. As income inequality has risen, the bottom 95 percent of Americans have <a target="_blank" href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/02/news/economy/income-debt-inequality/?source=cnn_bin">fallen deeper into debt</a> over the last three decades, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The top five percent, meanwhile, have seen their personal debt reduced, CNN Money reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned</strong>, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. <strong>But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings</strong>.</p>
<p>The bottom 95% had incomes of roughly $160,000 or less in 2007, including capital gains.</p>
<p>And then there’s the top 5%. <strong>Their debt-to-income level actually fell during the same period, from 76 cents of debt for every dollar earned in 1983, to just 64 cents in 2007</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p><img alt="" title="chart-debt-divide.top" width="475" height="310" src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/chart-debt-divide.top_.gif" /></p>
<p>The contributors to rising income and debt inequality are clear — for the richest Americans, incomes are <a target="_blank" href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/18/159261/tax-disparity-chart/">rising rapidly</a> while tax rates have fallen to historic lows. The rest, however, are increasingly burdened by <a target="_blank" href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/12/12/387823/student-loan-debt-has-ballooned-since-1990/">student loan debt</a> as the cost of college soars, mortgage debt as the prices on their homes have plummeted, and credit card debt as they’ve tried to keep their head above water despite <a target="_blank" href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/01/474245/may-day-charts-we-dont-currently-reward-our-workers/">stagnant wages</a> and rising unemployment.</p>
<p>And just as rising income inequality has hampered economic growth, rising debt inequality will <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/02/news/economy/income-debt-inequality/?source=cnn_bin">threaten the nation’s future</a>, experts say. Both times America had similar levels of debt inequality — in the 1920s and 2000s — crippling financial crises followed. And though the amount of debt held by the bottom 95 percent has shrunk since the end of the recession, that’s largely due to foreclosure and bankruptcy and shouldn’t be taken as a positive sign. “We’re still in similar levels of vulnerability as we were in 2008,” Michael Kumhoff, the report’s author, told CNN.</p>
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Wed, 02 May 2012 04:42:26 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress581214 at http://www.alternet.orgdebtwall streeteconomic inequalityWall Street Banks Coordinate To Fight May Day Protests, Compare Themselves To Elk Hunted By Wolveshttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/911295/wall_street_banks_coordinate_to_fight_may_day_protests%2C_compare_themselves_to_elk_hunted_by_wolves
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Organizers and protesters around the world will come together to commemorate International Workers Day tomorrow, and they are taking on familiar targets. Large protest actions are planned in more than <a href="http://occupywallst.org/forum/may-day/">115 American cities</a>, where activists will continue the anti-Wall Street message started by the 99 Percent Movement last fall. The action will again center in New York, where protesters have identified 99 targets in Manhattan, including <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-30/occupy-wall-street-plans-global-disruption-of-status-quo-may-1.html">large Wall Street banks</a> like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America.</p>
<p>Wall Street banks are pooling resources and coordinating with each other to plan for the New York City protests and will work with local law enforcement to monitor the protests throughout the day. Though the New York-based banks offered no specifics on how they plan to deal with the protests, one security adviser made the laughable comparison that Wall Street banks — the same ones whose errors include triggering the financial crisis and wrongfully foreclosing on thousands of Americans — were <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/wall-street-tracks-wolves-as-may-1-protests-loom.html">innocent elk defending themselves against attacking wolves</a>, Bloomberg reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Banks cooperating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park, he said. While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together</strong>, he said. [...]</p>
<p>Spokesmen for Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) wouldn’t describe security measures for the protests. <strong>One likened commenting to telling al-Qaeda about the bank’s continuity plans</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>That Wall Street banks view themselves as innocent victims of wolf-like predators in the form of protesters is ironic, given that multiple Wall Street insiders have blown the whistle about the financial industry’s predatory practices. In November, a former JPMorgan insider said that exploiting consumers was “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/18/372044/exploiting-purpose-banking/">the purpose of the banking organization</a>,” a claim seemingly echoed by a Goldman Sachs trader who decried the bank’s “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/14/444173/goldman-sachs-resign-toxic-culture-column/">toxic and destructive</a>” culture in which clients were sometimes referred to as “muppets.” Remember, it was Goldman that sold self-described “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/14/158591/goldman-criminal-investigation/">shitty deals</a>” to its own customers. Other banks have perpetuated fraudulent <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/01/310015/banks-still-fabricating-documents/">foreclosure</a> and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/17/405406/banks-robo-signing-credit-cards/">credit card</a> practices, profited off of student loans, and charged huge fees on customers who were <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/14/367467/bank-of-america-unemployment-benefit-fees/">collecting unemployment benefits</a>.</p>
<p>It’s no secret why the banks view the 99 Percent Movement so negatively — the movement took Wall Street’s excesses and abuses to the mainstream, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/18/346892/chart-media-jobs-wall-street-ignoring-deficit-hysteria/">refocusing the national discussion</a> on rising income inequality, exploding student debt, and fraudulent banking practices. That effort will continue tomorrow, when protesters will march through Manhattan and picket various Wall Street banks. They’ll be joined by actions in San Francisco, where protesters will specifically target Wells Fargo, as well as in other cities around the country. More events will take place around the world, in cities like London, Sydney, Toronto, and Barcelona. </p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:09:34 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress581182 at http://www.alternet.orgbankersbankssachsgoldmanOccupyWallStreetowsoccupy wall streetOutsourced: American Corporations Create More Jobs Overseas Than At Homehttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/909551/outsourced%3A_american_corporations_create_more_jobs_overseas_than_at_home
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> With the nation’s unemployment rate still above eight percent, millions of Americans are looking for work, and the country’s biggest corporations are hiring. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, however, many of those corporations are <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577367881972648906.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5">adding jobs overseas at a faster pace</a> than they are at home. Even worse, others are cutting their domestic workforces while adding jobs in other countries at a rapid pace:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT +2.70% International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., boosted their employment at home by 3.1%, or 113,000 jobs, between 2009 and 2011, the same rate of increase as the nation’s other employers. But they also added more than 333,000 jobs in their far-flung—and faster-growing— foreign operations.</p>
<p>The companies included in the analysis were the largest of those that disclose their U.S. and non-U.S. employment in annual securities filings. All of them have at least 50,000 employees. Collectively, they employed roughly 6.4 million workers world-wide last year, up 7.7% from two years earlier. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. jobs increased 3.1%, according to the Labor Department.</p></blockquote>
<p>Many of the companies are adding jobs in the U.S. but adding even more overseas — reversing a trend from a decade ago in which they were outsourcing American jobs to other countries. But some companies, like Wal-Mart, have boosted overseas employment while maintaining flat job growth in the U.S., and others, like UPS, have<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577367881972648906.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#project%3Djobscount041220120426">slashed jobs at home</a> even while adding them in other countries:</p>
<p><img src="http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/overseasjobschart.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>A similar Wall Street Journal report last April found that America’s largest multinational corporations <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/19/159555/us-corporations-outsourced-americans/">outsourced more than 2.4 million jobs</a> over the last decade, even as they cut their overall workforces by 2.9 million.</p>
<p>President Obama has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/business/obama-seeks-tax-breaks-to-return-jobs-from-abroad.html">proposed a tax credit</a> to encourage businesses to bring jobs from overseas back to the United States in order to relieve high unemployment and boost economic growth. Republicans and corporations, meanwhile, have blamed outsourcing on high taxes, even though <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/05/260535/graph-corporate-tax-second-lowest/">corporations pay less</a> in America than they would in most of the developed world.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:33:24 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress581112 at http://www.alternet.orgoverseasabroadamericacorporationsemploymentcredittaxobamagrowthjobsWells Fargo Insiders Detail Foreclosure Fraud Practices: ‘It’s Exactly Like An Assembly Line’http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/907008/wells_fargo_insiders_detail_foreclosure_fraud_practices%3A_%E2%80%98it%E2%80%99s_exactly_like_an_assembly_line%E2%80%99
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>That Wells Fargo has <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/10/14/173573/wells-fargo-busted/">fraudulently processed mortgage documents</a> using a process called robo-signing has been evident for nearly two years, since scandal enveloped the mortgage industry in 2010. That it <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/01/310015/banks-still-fabricating-documents/">kept doing it</a> even after the scandal broke has been known for months. The practice, at Wells Fargo and other Wall Street banks, has led to waves of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/29/377392/banks-illegally-foreclose-military/">improper</a><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/10/461689/judge-blasts-wells-fargo/">foreclosures</a> and a $25 billion settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/19/11269115-inside-the-foreclosure-factory-theyre-working-overtime">new report</a> from MSNBC, however, provided an inside account of how Wells Fargo’s robo-signing department works. Unqualified employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $50,000 are given titles like “vice president of loan documentation” so they can sign foreclosure documents. Actual supervisors institute quotas on employees, forcing them to sign a certain number of foreclosure files each day — sometimes telling them they can’t eat breakfast or take lunch until they’re done. Documents required for homeowners to avoid foreclosure were ignored, left sitting on an unattended fax machine.</p>
<p>The result: the nation’s largest mortgage servicer often improperly foreclosed on homeowners who weren’t past due or owed little interest while pushing the files out the door as fast as possible, as an insider told MSNBC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some families apparently were denied loan modifications after only cursory interviews, she said. Other borrowers applying for help sent comprehensive personal financial documents to a fax machine that she discovered had been unattended for weeks. Others landed in foreclosure after owing interest payments of as little as $1.18 a day, according to documents she said she reviewed. [...]</p>
<p>“There was one file where they weren’t even past due and they were in foreclosure status,” the loan processor said. “They’re pushing these files and pushing these files….”</p></blockquote>
<p>The MSNBC report comes just a month after a similar report from the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which found many of the same occurrences at Wells Fargo. In that report, Wells Fargo allegedly put an employee who had <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/13/443365/pizza-banks-robo-signing/">previously sold pizza</a> in charge of loan documentation. Worse yet, the report found that executives at the banks knew about the practices and refused to stop them.</p>
<p>Higher-ups at Wells Fargo, however, are still denying that these abuses take place. “No one here is asked to sign anything they don’t understand. Period. End of story,” Michael DeVito, executive vice president of Wells Fargo’s Home Mortgage Default Servicing, told MSNBC. “<a href="http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/19/11269115-inside-the-foreclosure-factory-theyre-working-overtime">There’s no production quota</a> and if a team member says, ‘I don’t understand this I’m not going to sign it,’ that’s fine.”</p>
<p>Another Wells Fargo employee had a different account. “It’s exactly like an assembly line,” a loan processor told MSNBC. “You sign it, you push it off to a notary, they stamp it, you put it in a box and it goes somewhere else.” The next step, unfortunately, is that someone loses their home.</p> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:40:11 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress580964 at http://www.alternet.orgMove Your Money: San Francisco Churches Move $10 Million From Wells Fargohttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/817940/move_your_money%3A_san_francisco_churches_move_%2410_million_from_wells_fargo
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Angry at the Wall Street banks that were at the center of the financial meltdown, Americans have spent the last six months<a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/23/408935/people-move-bank-of-america/">moving their money</a> to credit unions and community banks in unprecedented numbers. More than <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/03/360804/650000-americans-credit-unions/">650,000 people</a> moved to credit unions in one month last year, and <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/02/417054/americans-moving-banks-90-days/">5.6 million</a>Americans switched banks in the last three months.</p>
<p>Religious organizations have been at the forefront of movements to get consumers to move their money. The New Bottom Line, a coalition of faith groups, pledged to move <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/angry-churches-pull-money-from-big-banks/2011/11/22/gIQARUaVlN_story.html?wprss=rss_on-faith">$1 billion</a> this year, and before Thanksgiving, churches <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/23/375775/angry-over-unfair-mortgage-practices-churches-pull-money-from-wall-street-banks/">moved $55 million</a>away from Wall Street banks with pledges to remove as much as $100 million more. This week, churches in San Francisco announced they were <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/blog/san-francisco-congregations-move-10-million-out-of-big-banks/">moving another $10 million</a>, Faith in Public Life reports:</p>
<p>This week, <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">a group of clergy in San Francisco added another $10 million to that total</strong> with an Ash Wednesday press conference calling on Wells Fargo to put an immediate freeze on its foreclosures and repent for their misconduct.</p>
<p>Watch a news report about the group’s efforts:</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 21px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "> </p>
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<p> </p>
<p>Wells Fargo issued a statement on the protest, saying, “We make every effort to avoid foreclosure.” The bank’s practices, however, tell a different story. Last July, it foreclosed on a family after <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/27/278576/wells-fargo-foreclosure/">telling it to skip payments</a> in order to get a loan modification. It was found to have engaged in discriminatory lending practices, investigated for <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/29/377392/banks-illegally-foreclose-military/">illegal foreclosures</a> on military veterans, and fined for its subprime lending practices.</p>
<p>According to consulting firms, the nation’s 10 biggest banks <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/21/373191/banks-185-billion-deposits-loss/">could lose $185 million</a>in customer deposits because of customer defections.</p> Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:58:49 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress579690 at http://www.alternet.orgmove your moneyOccupywells fargoRomney Endorser Slams Mitt On Auto Rescue: ‘No One Could Have’ Saved The Industry Except The Governmenthttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/811850/romney_endorser_slams_mitt_on_auto_rescue%3A_%E2%80%98no_one_could_have%E2%80%99_saved_the_industry_except_the_government
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Mitt Romney’s renewed opposition to the rescue that saved the American auto industry, which came in the form of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/14/424857/romney-detroit-bankrupt/">yet another editorial</a> announcing his desire to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” was <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/17/427489/insiders-slam-romney-autos/">immediately slammed</a> by auto industry insiders, reporters who covered the rescue, and even publications that had once taken his same position.</p>
<p>Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R), who endorsed Romney, has now joined that chorus, telling Western Michigan University’s WMUK radio that turning to the private sector to rescue Detroit as Romney advocated was <a href="http://wmuk.org/news/select/261773/">never an option</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>HOST:</strong> He wrote an op-ed for the Detroit News in which he said it is good news that U.S. auto companies are back but he questioned the manner in which it was done, the so-called auto bailout. This was a fight that you were knee deep in at the time it was happening. Do you agree with his characterization?</p>
<p><strong>UPTON:</strong> I did not see the article that he wrote. I do know that all of the Michigan delegation worked very hard as related to the revival of the auto industry.<strong> There was really a choice between bankruptcy and liquidation.</strong> There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars. <strong>There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>Later in the interview, Upton disputed Romney’s assertion that the rescue was a President Obama-led bailout of unions, noting that President George W. Bush began the program and that it was “bipartisan from the get-go.” Upton then noted that without the rescue, Michigan “would have hit <a href="http://wmuk.org/news/select/261773/">40 percent unemployment</a> rates.”</p>
<p>Upton isn’t the only Michigan politician to criticize Romney’s position. Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who also <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/16/426645/snyder-romney-auto-rescue/">endorsed Romney</a>, told the New York Times last November that the GOP should stop criticizing the auto rescue, saying he wouldn’t “second-guess” it because “the auto industry is doing <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/michigan-governor-warns-candidates-on-auto-bailout/">very well</a> today.” Oddly, both Upton and Snyder have chosen to tout Romney’s economic credentials to Michigan voters while ignoring his factually-challenged opposition to a rescue that <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/22/394265/auto-industry-2011/">saved the state’s largest industry</a>.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/21/429279/romney-endorser-corrects-him-on-auto-rescue-no-one-could-have-saved-the-industry-except-the-government/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:07:11 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress579582 at http://www.alternet.orggovernmentrepublicanFred Uptonbailoutjobsunemploymentfailunionsmitt romneydetroitautomobileindustryautoCNN Contributor Dana Loesch Defends Virginia ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Bill As No Different Than Consensual Sexhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/805501/cnn_contributor_dana_loesch_defends_virginia_%E2%80%98state-sponsored_rape%E2%80%99_bill_as_no_different_than_consensual_sex
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> This week, a Virginia state House committee overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. Because the majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, many women would have to undergo an <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/02/17/427778/virginia-poised-to-enact-state-sponsored-rape-law-forcing-women-to-be-vaginally-probed-before-abortions/">invasive procedure</a>“in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced,” as Dahlia Lithwick explained last week.</p>
<p>CNN contributor and Andrew Breitbart blogger Dana Loesch, however, sees no problem with a law that effectively legalizes <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/15/government-sanctioned-rape-in-state-virginia-and-texas">state-sponsored rape</a>, saying the procedure is <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39937_CNNs_Dana_Loesch_Equates_Mandatory_Trans-Vaginal_Ultrasound_to_Having_Sex">no different</a> than penetration that occurred during consensual intercourse that “resulted in the pregnancy,” as Little Green Footballs reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>LOESCH: That’s the big thing that progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth. [...] There were individuals saying, “Oh what about the Virginia rape? The rapes that, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?” What? <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Wait a minute, they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Listen:</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 21px; font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; "> </p>
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<p>Unfortunately, such a radical view isn’t unique to conservative talking heads like Loesch. According to Lithwick, an unnamed Republican delegate made the same argument in support of the bill, saying women consented to being “<a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/virginia_ultrasound_law_women_who_want_an_abortion_will_be_forcibly_penetrated_for_no_medical_reason.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2">vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant</a>.”</p> Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:04:13 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress579534 at http://www.alternet.orgwomen's rightsabortionstate-sponsored rapevirginiaDana Loeschdalia lithwickBank of America Gets Dumped on Valentine's Dayhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/789179/bank_of_america_gets_dumped_on_valentine%27s_day
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Since the 99 Percent Movement began last fall, activists have pushed consumers to transfer their money from big banks that were at the center of the financial crisis to smaller community banks and credit unions. Thus far, their efforts have been successful. Around 200,000 moved their accounts on “Bank Transfer Day” in November (early estimates of 600,000 were revised down), and in the last 90 days, more than <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/02/417054/americans-moving-banks-90-days/">5.6 million</a> moved their accounts, with more than 600,000 citing Bank Transfer Day as the reason.</p>
<p>Today, to celebrate Valentine’s Day, activists in New York City will <a href="http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20120213201743872">target Bank of America</a>, citing the bank’s shoddy consumer record regarding its mortgage lending practices and its support for hazardous environmental practices like mountaintop removal coal mining, according to a press release published at the Paramus Post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bank of America loves profits more than people. We, the 99%, want out of this abusive relationship. Bank of America has foreclosed on more homes than any other bank in the United States. On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, housing and environmental activists will break up with Bank of America.</p></blockquote>
<p>According to the release, activists organized by Mountain Justice, an environmental group, and various groups associated with Occupy Wall Street will gather at New York’s Washington Square this afternoon before marching to a local Bank of America branch and delivering thousands of blue valentines. Bank of America is a “<a href="http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20120213201743872">grave threat to US financial stability</a>,” the release says, and it also has “an ugly relationship with the planet: bankrupting the ecosystem with their investments in the coal industry–lending billions of dollars to companies seeking to build new coal-fired power plants.”</p>
<p>Bank of America has been the target of protests over its financial and foreclosure practices, ranging from charging customers fees to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/14/367467/bank-of-america-unemployment-benefit-fees/">withdraw unemployment benefits</a>, foreclosing on homes because of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/05/398677/bank-of-america-foreclose-80-cent/">clerical errors</a>, and perpetuating fraudulent foreclosure practices. The bank, meanwhile, has been targeted repeatedly by environmental activists for its <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/16/369883/eight-arrested-in-charlotte-protesting-bank-of-americas-connections-to-big-coal/">connections to Big Coal</a>.</p>
<p>According to one consulting firm, Bank of America is the most susceptible bank to bank transfer protests and could lose up to 10 percent of its customers and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/21/373191/banks-185-billion-deposits-loss/">$42 billion in customer deposits</a>.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/14/424983/99-percent-activists-celebrate-valentines-day-by-breaking-up-with-bank-of-america/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:56:54 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress579414 at http://www.alternet.orgactionnew yorkbank99 percentowsvalentine's daybank of americaFormer Reagan Economist To GOP Candidates: Reagan Policies ‘Can’t And Shouldn’t Be Replicated Today’http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/776428/former_reagan_economist_to_gop_candidates%3A_reagan_policies_%E2%80%98can%E2%80%99t_and_shouldn%E2%80%99t_be_replicated_today%E2%80%99
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>There have been no shortage of Ronald Reagan mentions on the campaign trail, with Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum invoking the former president’s name at seemingly every turn. Each argues that only he is truly like Reagan, and that only his massive, budget-busting tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans is in the true spirit of Reagan’s legacy.</p>
<p class="byline"> </p>
<p class="post"></p><p>Today, on what would have been Reagan’s 101st birthday, his former economist published an editorial — titled “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-the-gop-should-stop-invoking-reaganomics/2012/01/31/gIQAQRb6mQ_story.html">Why the GOP should stop invoking Reaganomics</a>” — in the Washington Post telling the candidates to stop it with the name-dropping. Bruce Bartlett, who served under both Reagan and George H.W. Bush, outlined the differences between today’s economic circumstances and those of the Reagan years, positing that while curbing inflation was the biggest issue in the Reagan era, today’s economic policies must be focused on boosting demand.</p>
<p>The result of those differences, Bartlett wrote, is that Reagan’s policies “can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Judging from the candidates’ tax proposals, <strong>they seem to believe that the most Reagan-like candidate is the one with the biggest tax cut. But as the person who drafted the 1981 Reagan tax cut, I think Republicans misunderstand the premises upon which Reagan’s economic policies were based and why those policies can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today</strong>. [...]</p>
<p><strong>All of the evidence tells us that the economy’s fundamental problem today is not on the supply side but the demand side</strong>. According to a recent study by Credit Suisse, two-thirds of the difference in growth at this point in the business cycle, compared with previous cycles, is due to slower consumer spending. And low inflation — as well as widespread unemployment, vast stocks of unsold houses, empty factories and other indicators — tells us that <strong>money is tight, not loose, as was the case in the late 1970s</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Bartlett isn’t the only one noting the weakness of the GOP’s plans to bolster the economic recovery. Multiple economics professors told Reuters that the Republican plans <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/09/364830/gop-proposals-would-earn-failing-grades-in-econ-101-professors-say/">wouldn’t pass an Econ 101 class</a>. The candidates’ economic proposals will <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/us/politics/romneys-tax-bill-and-gop-deficit-problems.html">explode the deficit</a>, expand income inequality through <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/07/313068/romneys-tax-plan-cost-6-6-trillion/">massive tax breaks</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/25/411338/presidential-tax-plans-walmart/">to the rich</a>, and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/19/391765/mitt-romneys-dream-world-cutting-billions-out-of-medicaid-will-not-hurt-the-poor/">hurt the poor</a> and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/06/399196/romneys-tax-plan-children/">middle classes</a> if enacted, but the GOP continues to ignore evidence that today’s situation is different than Reagan’s.</p>
<p>“Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies,” Bartlett concluded. “Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances.”</p>
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<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/06/419739/former-reagan-economist-to-gop-candidates-reagan-policies-cant-and-shouldnt-be-replicated-today/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:13:39 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress579214 at http://www.alternet.orgjobsreaganeconomyGroup Delivers Hundreds Of Tacos To Connecticut Mayor Who Insulted Latinos With ‘Tacos’ Commenthttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/767934/group_delivers_hundreds_of_tacos_to_connecticut_mayor_who_insulted_latinos_with_%E2%80%98tacos%E2%80%99_comment
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Latinos in East Haven, Connecticut delivered hundreds of tacos to the town’s mayor Thursday, just two days after he made a flippant, derogatory comment about them while discussing alleged police discrimination and violence in his community.</p>
<p>In the wake of those allegations, Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. was asked what he would do to reach out to the Latino community. “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/this-is-someones-mayor/251972/">I might have tacos</a> when I go home, I’m not quite sure yet,” Maturo said. The comment drew strong rebukes from area Latinos, and one group responded with a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/26/us/connecticut-east-haven-tacos/index.html">campaign to respond</a>, as CNN reported today:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>That set off the activist group, a local branch of the Reform Immigration for America organization, which said that anytime someone texts the word “taco” to 69866, it will deliver a taco to the mayor on their behalf</strong>.</p>
<p>They’ve received more than 2,600 texts, the group said in a statement Thursday.</p>
<p>Maturo twice apologized for the comments, saying his words were largely a product of stress.</p>
<p>Still, <strong>some 500 tacos were placed inside his office; the rest are already being rerouted to local food-assistance outlets</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>The 500 tacos that were placed in Maturo’s office were eventually donated to a food-assistance charity, but even that drew controversy. Maturo issued a statement after the drop-off saying his office <a href="http://www.theday.com/article/20120126/NWS01/120129674/-1/zip06&amp;town=East-Haven&amp;template=NWS01zip06art">donated the tacos</a> to charity. The group that delivered the tacos to his office, Reforming Immigration for America, then took to Twitter, saying Maturo’s claim was false.</p>
<p>“Now, Mayor Maturo claims they’re donating tacos to the soup kitchen. WE did that, he left knowing we were on our way,” the group <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/#!/RI4A/status/162619775313387520">posted</a> on its Twitter account. Another post called the mayor’s statement “<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/RI4A/status/162621084376629249">false and misleading</a>.” </p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/27/413426/group-delivers-hundreds-of-tacos-to-connecticut-mayor-who-insulted-latinos-with-tacos-comment/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:23:22 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress579016 at http://www.alternet.orgracismconnecticutBritish Members Of Parliament Call For Closure Of Romney’s Cayman Islands Tax Havenhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/765978/british_members_of_parliament_call_for_closure_of_romney%E2%80%99s_cayman_islands_tax_haven
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) admitted last week that his tax rate was <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/17/405183/romney-admits-tax-rate-15/">about 15 percent</a> because his income mainly comes from investments that are taxed at lower rates than normal income. Romney’s income is also bolstered by the fact that several of his investments — worth millions of dollars — take advantage of <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/01/18/406580/romney-offshore-tax-havens/">offshore tax havens</a> in the Cayman Islands to boost profits.</p>
<p>Many of those investments are associated with Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney co-founded, which has an extensive history of using such tax havens to <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/12/157766/mitt-romney-tax-havens/">boost profits</a> at a multi-billion dollar cost to American taxpayers. Those tax havens aren’t just causing outrage among Americans, however. The Cayman Islands are a British territory, and British MP John Cryer, a former member of the British Treasury Select Committee, told the British blog Left Foot Forward that it is “<a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/01/mps-call-for-mitt-romney-tax-haven-to-be-closed/">a disgrace</a>” that corporations and investors like Romney and Bain can use them to avoid paying taxes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“As a former member of the Treasury select committee, I think <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">it is a disgrace that the Cayman Islands, a tax haven, can enable wealthy corporations and individuals such as Mitt Romney and others in the wealthiest 1% to avoid tax and still be cloaked in secrecy</strong>. Meanwhile all across the western world, hard-working people are seeing their living standards and take-home pay stagnate or reduced.</p>
<p>“<strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">It reminds me of President Kennedy’s comment in his inaugural speech, ‘pay any price, bear any burden’. Except it’s hard-working, modestly paid majority who are bearing that burden</strong>.”</p></blockquote>
<p>According to Left Foot Forward, Cryer proposed a motion last week calling on the House of Commons to immediately close the Cayman Islands as a tax haven. The motion states that the House is “alarmed” by reports that Romney and others are using the Caymans to “avoid paying the same tax rate as other US citizens” and “concerned about the <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.leftfootforward.org/images/2012/01/Mitt-Romney-tax-haven-edm.pdf">continued use of tax havens</a> by the top 1% in the US and UK to avoid paying the correct tax in their own country.” The motion then “calls on the UK government to introduce urgent legislation to help <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.leftfootforward.org/2012/01/mps-call-for-mitt-romney-tax-haven-to-be-closed/">close tax havens</a> and increase transparency so that the very richest pay their fair share of tax in their respective countries.”</p>
<p>The United States loses <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.uspirg.org/home/reports/report-archives/tax--budget-policy/tax--budget-policy--reports/tax-shell-game-what-do-tax-dodgers-cost-you">$100 billion a year</a> in tax revenue to offshore tax havens like the Caymans, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.</p> Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:11:25 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress578874 at http://www.alternet.orgcayman islandsparliamenthouse of commonseconomytax havenmitt romneyREPORT: 3.3 Million Will Lose Unemployment Insurance Under House GOP’s Payroll Tax Billhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/747715/report%3A_3.3_million_will_lose_unemployment_insurance_under_house_gop%E2%80%99s_payroll_tax_bill
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>House Republicans passed their version of a payroll tax cut extension last night, but not before adding a litany of spending cuts and changes to federal programs that they knew Democrats would never accept. The GOP, which still refuses to tax a relatively small number of millionaires to give an extra $1,000 a year to the average middle class family, included <a target="_blank" href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/13/388632/gop-raising-taxes-on-millionaires-a-non-starter-but-hiking-taxes-on-medicare-retirees-is-a-ok/">cuts to Medicare</a>benefits and the Affordable Care Act and froze federal worker pay for an additional two years.</p>
<p>But as ThinkProgress reported last week, the bill also <a target="_blank" href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/09/385954/gop-unemployment-payroll/">targets the unemployed</a>, reducing eligibility for unemployment insurance from 99 weeks to 79 weeks. Eventually, the plan will reduce that eligibility down to 59 weeks — and when it does, it will kick more than <a href="http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/Press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=11973">3.3 million</a> unemployed Americans out of the program, according to data from the Department of Labor.</p>
<p>In just four states — California, Florida, Texas, and New York — more than 1.25 million will become ineligible for the program. In each of five other states — North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois — more than 100,000 people will lose their eligibility.</p>
<p>Across the country, Republicans have chosen to paint unemployment insurance as a “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/05/361697/tennessee-unemployment-benefits-lifestyle/">lifestyle</a>” that creates laziness among those who use it just to get by. The GOP ignores that there are, on average, four applicants for<a href="http://equityjungle.com/2011/10/13/job-jolts-there-are-4-57-unemployed-per-job-opening-in-august-2011/">each open job</a>, decrying the unemployment insurance program for incentivizing joblessness, even though those who are eligible for the program remain out of work only <a href="http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2010/el2010-12.html">1.6 weeks longer</a> than those who aren’t eligible.</p>
<p>Unemployment insurance, meanwhile, remains one of the strongest economic stimulus tools available to the federal government, as recent studies have shown that failure to extend them would cost the economy <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/05/336507/ui-expiration-slows-growth/">$57 billion</a> in the first three months of 2012. That amounts to a loss of 0.38 percent of GDP, equal to the rate at which the economy grew in 2011.</p>
<p>Ten congressional Democrats joined Republicans in <a href="http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/923?ref=politics">voting for the misguided plan</a>. In the eight states they represent, nearly 886,000 people would become ineligible for unemployment insurance, led by the 584,000 that would lose benefits in Rep. Dennis Cardoza’s (D) home state of California. You can see the full state-by-state breakdown <a href="http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/112/State_by_state_analysis.pdf">here</a>.</p>
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<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/14/389015/report-33-million-will-lose-unemployment-insurance-under-house-gops-payroll-tax-bill/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:46:38 -0800Travis Waldron, Think Progress577976 at http://www.alternet.orgpayroll taxtreasurydebt ceilingtaxesmedicaredemocratsobamagopbudgetCorporate Tax Dodging Has Cost States More Than $42 Billion in Revenue Over the Last Three Yearshttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/745027/corporate_tax_dodging_has_cost_states_more_than_%2442_billion_in_revenue_over_the_last_three_years
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>ThinkProgress has documented the repeated tax dodging of large corporations, some of which, like GE, have gone entire years without paying taxes despite hauling in massive profits. Now, that phenomenon has spread to the states, where many corporations have largely avoided paying state corporate income taxes despite growing profits. Some companies, like DuPont, avoided state taxes altogether, paying nothing from 2008 to 2010 even as its profits piled up.</p>
<p>But DuPont wasn’t alone. According to a study from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 68 corporations <a href="http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers50states/">avoided state taxes entirely</a> for at least one year from 2008 to 2010, costing state governments at least <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/some-fortune-500-companies-pay-less-than-average-in-state-taxes.html?_r=1&amp;ref=us">$42.7 billion</a>, as the New York Times reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To gauge how much Fortune 500 companies are paying in corporate income taxes, the study looked at the 265 of them that are both profitable and disclose their state tax payments. It found that 68 reported paying no state corporate taxes in at least one year between 2008 and 2010. All together, the study found that the companies reported $1.33 trillion in domestic profits from 2008 to 2010, but paid states only about half of what they would have if they had paid at the average corporate income tax rate of all states — reducing their state taxes by some $42.7 billion.</p></blockquote>
<p>As the Times notes, the share of state revenues coming from corporate taxes has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/12/07/us/07taxes-graphic.html?ref=us">steadily declined since 1980</a>, from about 10 percent then to less than 6 percent now. And despite Republican rhetoric calling for lower corporate taxes on the national level, America’s rate there remains low as well. Corporations continue to sit on huge amounts of cash without investing in job creation, but GOP politicians and corporate leaders have called for even larger tax giveaways.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the lost tax revenue would have gone a long way toward plugging budget holes that were instead filled by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/22/276133/wisconsin-school-administrators-walker-wrong/">cutting education</a>, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/07/142709/scott-budget-event/">social services</a>, and programs that helped states’ <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/27/354232/christie-budget-after-school-education/">most vulnerable</a> and needy residents.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/07/383951/corporate-tax-dodging-has-cost-states-more-than-42-billion-in-revenue-over-the-last-three-years/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:52:41 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress577836 at http://www.alternet.orgtaxescorporationsPastor at Kentucky Church That Banned Interracial Couples Calls for Vote to Reverse Decisionhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/742667/pastor_at_kentucky_church_that_banned_interracial_couples_calls_for_vote_to_reverse_decision
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>The lead pastor at the Kentucky church that <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/11/30/378469/kentucky-church-votes-to-ban-interracial-couples-from-becoming-members/">banned interracial couples</a> from becoming members or participating in certain worship activities now expects that ban to be overturned. Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church, a small congregation in Pike County, Kentucky, voted to ban such couples Sunday, months after a former pastor originally drafted a resolution decreeing the policy.</p>
<p>But after outrage from local residents, local religious leaders, and the National Association of Free Will Baptists, current pastor Stacy Stepp told the Appalachian News-Express that he expected state and national Free Will Baptist officials to <a href="http://news-expressky.com/news/article_a2bca5b6-1c72-11e1-afbe-0019bb2963f4.html">overturn the ban</a>. He has also <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/2011/12/01/1979905/free-will-baptist-executive-office.html">called for a new vote</a> on the matter, perhaps as early as this Sunday, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. The ban was instituted in a 9-6 vote of church members Sunday, though much of the 40-member crowd abstained. “We’re going to get it resolved,” Stepp said.</p>
<p>The National Association of Free Will Baptists released a statement Thursday backing that action and clarifying that it did not hold a formal position on interracial marriages because “it has not been an issue in the denomination.” It encouraged local and state church officials, as well as Gulnare’s membership, to “<a href="http://www.nafwb.org/statement">reverse the decision</a>“:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Many interracial couples are members of Free Will Baptist churches. They are loved, accepted, and respected by their congregations. It is unfair and inaccurate to characterize the denomination as racist.</p>
<p><strong>It is our understanding that steps are being taken by the church in question to reverse its decision. We encourage the church to follow through with this action.</strong>Leaders from the local conference and state association in Kentucky are working with the church to resolve this matter.</p></blockquote>
<p>The ban on interracial couples was originally introduced through a resolution by former pastor Melvin Thompson after Stella Harville, a long-time attendee, performed at the church in August alongside her fiance, a native of Zimbabwe.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/12/02/380537/pastor-at-kentucky-church-that-banned-interracial-couples-calls-for-vote-to-reverse-decision/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 04:01:52 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress577726 at http://www.alternet.orgchurchreligionraceWall Street Banks Earned Billions Off $7.7 Trillion in Secret Fed Loans Made During the Financial Crisishttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/740229/wall_street_banks_earned_billions_off_%247.7_trillion_in_secret_fed_loans_made_during_the_financial_crisis
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html">undisclosed loans</a> to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.</p>
<p>The total cost of the Fed loans amounted to <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html">$7.77 trillion</a>, and unlike the funds made available by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.</p>
<p>“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In one month, Morgan Stanley — one of the most vulnerable financial companies at the time — took <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html">$107 billion in secret loans</a>, enough to pay off a tenth of the nation’s delinquent mortgages. The loans, like those made to other institutions, were never reported to Morgan Stanley’s shareholders or the taxpayers who subsidized them.</p>
<p>Other banks drew similar loans without disclosing them. Bank of America, for instance, held $86 billion in public debt on the day then-CEO Ken Lewis declared his company “one of the <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html">strongest and most stable</a> major banks in the world.” Bank of America’s Fed borrowing peaked at $91.4 billion in February 2009; at the same time, it benefited from $45 billion in TARP loans.</p>
<p>And even while members of Congress were working to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system, the banks and the Fed kept them in the dark about the loans. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the architects of the Wall Street reform act that eventually became law, and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the GOP’s lead negotiator on TARP, told Bloomberg they were unaware of the specifics of such loans.</p>
<p>Had Congress had such information, members of both parties would have changed their votes to favor Wall Street reform, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said. Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), meanwhile, said knowledge of the loans could have led to a push to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from owning investment companies and vice versa, thereby limiting their size and vulnerability to such crises.</p>
<p>The secret nature of the loans, however, instead helped Wall Street work to “preserve a broken status quo” that allowed its biggest banks to grow even larger than they were before the crisis. The nation’s largest banks have turned <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/07/362488/wall-street-profit-obama-bush/">more in profit</a> in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/22/160524/banks-spending-2011/">spending millions</a> to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/21/373260/bank-lobbying-track-record-high/">record high</a> this year.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/28/376430/wall-street-banks-fed-loans-secret/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Mon, 28 Nov 2011 03:56:54 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress577585 at http://www.alternet.orgfinancial crisiswall streetbailoutPerry Promises To End Civilian-Controlled Militaryhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/737112/perry_promises_to_end_civilian-controlled_military
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has staked his presidential hopes on a radical revamping of Washington’s political structure, reshaping the tax code, making the legislature<a style="font-family: Calibri, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-11-17/New-Hampshire-Rick-Perry-part-time-Congress/51276094/1">part-time</a>, enacting term limits on the Supreme Court, and closing multiple government agencies.</p>
<p>Perry took his radical new vision for America to a new level last night at the Iowa FAMiLY Leader presidential forum. Going against the Constitution, centuries of American history, and the wishes of our nation’s founders, Perry claimed that the United States military should not be “micromanaged” by civilians and needed military commanders to be “truly in charge”:</p>
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<p>PERRY: There is a time and a place for us to intervene, and intervene militarily. But when we intervene militarily, we best make the decision on how we are going to win and how we are going to win convincingly and quickly, send those young men and women with the equipment to win. <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Don’t let some congressman sitting in an air-conditioned office in Washington DC deciding what the rules of engagement are</strong>. … <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">And for us to micromanage them, in a civilian way, without their commanders truly in charge, is absolutely irresponsible and as commander-in-chief of this country I will not let it happen</strong>.</p></blockquote>
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<p> </p>
<p>By design, the U.S. military has always been under civilian control. While the president acts as the military’s civilian commander-in-chief, Congress has the Constitutionally-mandated authority to apportion military funding and approve any declaration of war. The military’s nuclear weapons, meanwhile, are owned and controlled by the civilian Department of Energy (which Perry, incidentally, <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/09/365849/abolishing-the-department-of-energy/">wants to abolish</a>).</p>
<p>The civilian structure of the military Perry has no use for wasn’t an accident — it is the norm in liberal democracies and what America’s Founding Fathers wanted. As Samuel Adams wrote in 1768, “Even when there is a necessity of the military power, within a land, a wise and prudent people will always have a watchful and jealous eye over it.” The founders feared giving too much power to military could lead to an oppressive federal government, the specter of which Perry has built his entire political ideology against.</p>
<p>Not only is Perry’s Constitutional history lacking, but his knowledge of current events is too. American military commanders — whom Perry asserts aren’t currently in charge — back the timetable to begin <a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/15/petraeus-enough-progess-made-afghan-withdrawal/">removing troops from Afghanistan</a> at the end of the year.</p>
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<p> </p> Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:27:20 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress577438 at http://www.alternet.orgmilitary2012presidencygoprick perryFormer JPMorgan Banker: Exploiting Consumers Is ‘The Purpose Of The Banking Organization’http://www.alternet.org/story/153129/former_jpmorgan_banker%3A_exploiting_consumers_is_%E2%80%98the_purpose_of_the_banking_organization%E2%80%99
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Wall Street continues to ignore America’s anger at it, sipping champagne from rooftops while protesters march below.</div></div></div>
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> Wall Street banks, largely spared from the economic ruin felt by millions of Americans since the financial crisis of 2008, have returned to profitability, generating <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/07/362488/wall-street-profit-obama-bush/">higher profits</a> in the two-and-a-half years since the crisis than they did in nearly eight years preceding it. But that hasn’t stopped them from seeking new ways to generate revenue — like Bank of America’s proposed $5-a-month debit card fee or the millions banks have made from charging consumers to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/14/367467/bank-of-america-unemployment-benefit-fees/">receive unemployment benefits</a> or food stamps.</p>
<p>If all this makes Americans feel like Wall Street banks only view them as money-making tools, well, that’s because the banks apparently do. According to David Mooney, a former JPMorgan Chase employee, Wall Street banks see consumers as an “income stream” to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-wallst-disconnect-idUSTRE7AH0Z620111118">exploit for profit-making purposes</a>, Reuters reports:</p>
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<p>David Mooney, chief executive officer of Alliant Credit Union in Chicago, one of the nation’s larger credit unions, used to work at a one of Wall Street’s top banks, JPMorgan Chase. There’s a vast cultural gap between Wall Street and his new world, he says: Old friends from the Street, he says, now jokingly refer to him as a “socialist.” A credit union is supposed to be run in the interests of all members, he says, while <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">commercial bankers tend to see consumers as customers who can be “exploited” by layering on more fees</strong>.</p>
<p>Says Mooney: “<strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization</strong>.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Mooney’s bluntness may seem shocking, but his assessment shouldn’t. Wall Street banks made millions profiting off <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html">shoddy mortgage lending practices</a>, setting the stage for the housing collapse that plunged millions of Americans into foreclosure. They made a mess of the foreclosure process, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/10/18/173579/citi-cuts-robos/">using</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/10/14/173573/wells-fargo-busted/">robo-signers</a> to speed <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/10/28/173602/bofa-signer-no-idea/">foreclosures</a> and foreclosing on homes they either <a href="http://bestfortmyersrealestate.com/fort-myers-florida-foreclosures/wells-fargo-sells-home-it-didnt-own/">didn’t own</a> or that <a href="http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jun/03/tables-turned-bank-of-america-foreclosure-case/">weren’t even in foreclosure</a>. They sold deals to investors that they knew would fail, and took advantage of customers with outrageous overdraft, credit card, and other fees.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the financial crisis and the horrors it exposed, Wall Street banks<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/22/160524/banks-spending-2011/">spent millions</a> to prevent the passage of financial regulatory reform. Once the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed, they spent just as much trying to shape its rules. They opposed the formation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency tasked with protecting consumers from predatory banking practices, and in concert with their Republican friends in Congress, have fought to shape who will lead the bureau and how it will work.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for Wall Street, it didn’t take blunt assessments like Mooney’s for Americans to take action. In October, 650,000 Americans <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/03/360804/650000-americans-credit-unions/">joined credit unions</a>, which, as Mooney noted, are “supposed to be run in the interests of all members.” <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/09/364734/40000-americans-joined-credit-unions/">40,000</a>more joined them on Bank Transfer Day earlier this month.</p>
<p>Wall Street, meanwhile, continues to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/17/370897/wall-street-employees-counter-protest-with-sign-reading-get-a-job/">ignore</a> America’s anger at it, sipping champagne from rooftops while protesters march below.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter-->Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. </div></div></div>
Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:00:01 -0800Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress668502 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & Politicswall streetjp morganVatican Calls For Economic Equality, Sweeping Reform Of Global Financial Systemhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/685117/vatican_calls_for_economic_equality%2C_sweeping_reform_of_global_financial_system
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p> With protesters taking to the streets around the world to fight for better income equality and economic opportunities for the poor and middle classes, the Vatican called Monday for an overhaul of world’s financial systems and a return to a global economy based on ethical behavior and “<a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iAhjVj2Uh-wzWQQx9YZrodvKmVkQ?docId=14b9f8e16b19419f8c06d0cea6971dec">achievement of a universal common good</a>,” the AP reports. While the Vatican has, in the past, criticized uncontrolled capitalism, the new call goes further, decrying “an economic liberalism that spurns all rules and controls.”</p>
<p>The call for greater control and equality in financial markets comes at a time when Republican presidential candidates — many of whom tout their religious credentials on the campaign trail — have <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/17/321419/bachmann-wall-street-killing-bank/">called for</a> the <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/25/303967/romney-dodd-frank-repeal/">repeal</a> of the <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/16/321161/perry-wall-street-tarp-flip-flops/">Dodd-Frank financial reform law</a>aimed at preventing a crisis similar to that of 2008, and as Republicans in both Congress and on the campaign trail continue to back <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/09/143283/gop-women-children-cuts/">budget cuts</a> that would <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/05/24/173968/house-gop-wic-cuts/">eviscerate programs</a> that <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/04/05/172014/paul-ryan-budget-medicare-medicaid-myths/">help the poor</a>. At the same time, protesters spurred by the original Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have brought increasing attention <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/04/163476/us-unequal-uganda-pakistan/">rising income inequality</a>, <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/19/348671/protest-photo-%E2%80%98i-hate-drum-circles-but-i-hate-corporate-greed-more%E2%80%99/">corporate greed</a>, and tax breaks for corporations and the <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/04/18/159261/tax-disparity-chart/">wealthiest Americans</a>.</p>
<p>The Vatican release is a clear sign that it supports the message of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton, said in a press release:</p>
<blockquote style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 50px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 50px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; quotes: none; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; ">“While conservative leaders and several presidential candidates want to eviscerate financial reform, the Vatican has sent a powerful message that prudent regulation of our financial system is a moral priority. I expect Catholic neo-cons who usually present themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy will ignore or scramble to defuse this timely teaching. <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation</strong>.”</p></blockquote>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; ">This isn’t the first time faith leaders have spoken out against so-called religious conservatives who have prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and repealing financial regulations over helping low-income Americans. A group of Catholic bishops signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) — both practicing Catholics — during the debt limit fight, denouncing budget cuts that <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/11/165423/catholic-scholars-letter-boehner/">disproportionately hurt the poor</a>. Other religious leaders made <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/27/280361/what-would-jesus-cut/">similar calls</a>, with Rev. Jim Wallis telling Republicans, “We did not get into fiscal trouble because of poor people. … The poor didn’t cause this. <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/04/236238/progressive-faith-ayn-rand/">Let’s not make them pay for it</a>.”</p>
<p class="post-update" style="margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; "></p><h5 style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 8px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 8px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(0, 153, 0); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-top-left-radius: 6px 6px; border-top-right-radius: 6px 6px; border-bottom-right-radius: 6px 6px; border-bottom-left-radius: 6px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 0.8em; width: auto; display: block; float: left; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">UPDATE</h5>
<p class="timestamp" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; line-height: 12px; font-size: 0.7em; float: left; clear: left; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-style: italic; "> </p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 80px; padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.5em; ">Father Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, wrote in a column today that the Vatican’s statement is “<a style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); " href="http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/10/21/vaticans-economic-statement-will-be-way-to-the-left-of-wall-street-financiers/">to the left of</a>” every member of Congress and perhaps even the Occupy Wall Street protesters.</p>
<p> </p> Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:12:29 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress576842 at http://www.alternet.orgreligionvaticanjobseconomywall street#occupywallstreetoccupy wall streetWall Street Journal Executive Resigns Over Yet Another News Corp. Scandalhttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/679716/wall_street_journal_executive_resigns_over_yet_another_news_corp._scandal
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>One of the top executives at the European branch of the Wall Street Journal, the flagship newspaper at Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, has <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/12/wall-street-journal-andrew-langhoff?CMP=twt_gu">resigned amid a growing scandal</a> that has called into question the paper’s journalistic ethics and jeopardized its reputation. Adding to the scandals News Corp. is already facing in Europe — alleged phone hacking, bribing of public officials — and a potential criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, the Guardian reported today that Andrew Langhoff, the European director of Dow Jones and Co. (the subsidiary of News Corp. that owns the Journal), oversaw a massive scam that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/12/wall-street-journal-andrew-langhoff?CMP=twt_gu">artificially inflated the circulation numbers</a> in Europe in order to avoid losing investors, readers, and advertisers.</p>
<p>The scam was organized in London and focused on the paper’s European edition, and even when top executives in New York were alerted, they failed to do anything about it, the Guardian reports:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been <strong>channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate</strong>, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal’s true circulation.</p>
<p>The bizarre scheme included a <strong>formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities</strong>, a move which led some staff to accuse the paper’s management of violating journalistic ethics and jeopardising its treasured reputation for editorial quality.</p>
<p>Internal emails and documents suggest the scam was promoted by Andrew Langhoff, the European managing director of the Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones and Co, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in July 2007. Langhoff resigned on Tuesday.</p></blockquote>
<p>According to the Guardian, the Journal contracts charged as little <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/12/wall-street-journal-andrew-langhoff?CMP=twt_gu">as one cent per copy</a>, meaning a company like Executive Learning Partnership (part of one of the biggest deals) could sponsor 3.1 million copies at a cost of only 31,080 euros. The deals began to blow up when ELP and other organizations complained about not receiving their fair share of coverage, despite multiple pages of exclusive stories throughout the paper. When the deals appeared to falter, the Journal, led by Langhoff, funneled money through a middleman, effectively using its own cash to pay for the copies of the paper so as to avoid an immediate 16 percent drop in circulation, which would have scared advertisers, shareholders, and readers.</p>
<p>The scam only adds to the growing perception that News Corp. is a company out of control after a tumultuous summer in which it was caught in scandal after scandal involving its journalistic practices in both Europe and the United States. <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/07/17/271316/breaking-uk-fraud-watchdog-opens-news-international-probe/">Fraud investigations were opened</a> and British MPs called Murdoch and his son, James, to appear <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/07/19/272927/fair-and-balanced-during-murdoch-testimony-fox-news-chyrons-parrot-murdoch-talking-points/">before Parliament</a> to discuss details of the company’s phone hacking scandal came to light. The FBI and Department of Justice both <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/22/276166/doj-subpoena-news-corp/">opened investigations</a> into the company over violations of American laws, and details emerged of News Corp. reporters hacking into the phones of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/14/us-newscorp-fbi-idUSTRE76D5O220110714">families of 9/11 victims</a>. Now, scandal seems to have spread to the company’s most prestigious publication.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/10/12/342259/wall-street-journal-executive-resigns-over-yet-another-news-corp-scandal/">Think Progress</a></div></div></div>
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:02:21 -0700Travis Waldron, Think Progress576595 at http://www.alternet.orgrupert murdochnews corp.wall street journalCantor Claims Victims "Need To Know" Disaster Relief Funds Are "There For Them" After Repeatedly Holding Funds Hostagehttp://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/671135/cantor_claims_victims_%22need_to_know%22_disaster_relief_funds_are_%22there_for_them%22_after_repeatedly_holding_funds_hostage
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>House Republicans finally pushed through their continuing resolution early this morning after finding yet another $100 million in spending cuts that <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/23/326976/23-votes-flip-100-million/">satiated the conservatives</a> who wouldn’t approve disaster relief funds without matching offsets. Immediately after it passed, spokespersons for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) took to Twitter to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/23/326997/gop-leadership-hostage-already-passed/">warn Senate Democrats</a> against blocking funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), despite the fact that a bipartisan Senate majority passed a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/23/326997/gop-leadership-hostage-already-passed/">$7 billion</a> FEMA relief package a week ago.</p>
<p>At a news conference today, Boehner and Cantor themselves joined in those warnings, attempting to blame Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Democratic colleagues for blocking disaster relief funds. Cantor, who has repeatedly insisted that the House would not approve disaster relief funds without offsets, blasted Reid for “blocking” funds that victims of multiple natural disasters needed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CANTOR: As the Speaker indicated, <strong>there are people who are suffering in a big way, and they need to know that FEMA and the disaster relief monies will be there for them</strong>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Watch it:</p>
<p><iframe height="350" frameborder="0" width="460" allowfullscreen="" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NhD6A8fF2Ws"></iframe></p>
<p>That’s an interesting change of position for Cantor, who was the first Republican to mention exchanging disaster relief funds for spending offsets in the wake of the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/24/169075/cantor-disaster-relief/">tornadoes</a> that hit Joplin, Missouri in May. Cantor again insisted on offsets after the <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/25/304204/cantor-earthquake/">East Coast earthquake</a> that was centered in Mineral, Virginia — the heart of his own district. And for good measure, Cantor again noted that offsets were necessary for disaster funds <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/29/306737/cantor-irene-no-relief-without-spending-cuts/">after Hurricane Irene</a> battered states along the East Coast from North Carolina to Vermont.</p>
<p>Democrats in both the Senate and House have been attempting to approve disaster relief without massive spending offsets to popular programs, including those that once had broad Republican support. And they haven’t been alone in their opposition. Cantor’s actions on disaster relief earned him rebuke from <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/31/308610/mcdonnell-cantor-disaster-cuts/">multiple</a> <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/01/309789/christie-cantor-disaster-aid/">Republican governors</a> and put him out of step with former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay (TX), who pushed through <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2011/may/23/cantor-learns-delays-lesson-disaster-spending/">deficit-financed disaster relief</a> after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-external-url field-type-link-field field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/23/327345/cantor-victims-disaster-relief-hostage/">ThinkProgress</a></div></div></div>
Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:22:16 -0700Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress576155 at http://www.alternet.orgdisaster reliefnatutral disasters